5.02 million people tried to open the same ticketing page at once. There were only 22,020 tickets. One minute later, they were gone.
This was Xiao Zhan’s first solo tour in the ten years since his debut. The opening stop was Nanjing, with shows on October 23 and 25.
Before tickets went on sale, more than 5.02 million people had registered interest in that stop alone—a record for a mainland China concert this year. The chance of getting a ticket was less than 0.5%.
There were six price tiers, from 390 yuan at the low end to 1,960 yuan at the high end. The day before tickets went on sale, a set of screenshots surfaced online. The first row was listed at 250,000 yuan, followed by two words: “Sold out.” The second row was 200,000 yuan, and the third was 190,000 yuan.
Based on face value, that first-row ticket had been marked up more than 120 times.
On the afternoon of the 15th, Damai issued a statement saying the exorbitantly priced tickets were fake, and that scalpers were maliciously driving up prices despite having no tickets at all. It said the leads had been handed over to the relevant authorities. In the same report, The Paper added that the authenticity of the screenshot itself had yet to be verified.
I don’t know whether the 250,000-yuan price reflected a real sale or was made up by scalpers to drive prices up. Damai says scalpers don’t have tickets, but it hasn’t released any data on scalper sales. For now, I can only take that claim with a grain of salt.
One thing is clear. When Xiao Zhan’s studio signed its contract with Damai, it voluntarily gave up the 15% of tickets that organizers can typically reserve under industry convention, putting them all into the public ticket pool. The contract also specified that there would be no internal or employee tickets. Entry required a three-way match between the person, ticket, and ID: the original ID card, e-ticket, and facial recognition all had to match. Tickets couldn’t be transferred or gifted, and the attendee couldn’t be changed. Each account could buy no more than two tickets.
The rules had one purpose: to bind the ticket to its holder. Even if scalpers managed to get tickets, they couldn’t pass them on to concertgoers.
Meanwhile, blockchain ticketing has long been touted as a way to fight scalpers. The logic sounds straightforward: put tickets on a blockchain so every resale is traceable, and hard-code a price ceiling into the contract so tickets can’t be resold at a markup.
The reality is less rosy. In 2023, ticketing giant Ticketmaster ran a pilot with a band’s fan club, issuing around 10,000 tokens that let holders buy tickets early. About 1,000 tickets were sold through that window. The NBA’s Sacramento Kings also worked with two platforms, LAVA and Flow, on NFT passes.
The problem is that neither project has released independently audited data demonstrating that it actually curbed scalping at scale. Industry trackers estimate that NFT trading volume for all of 2026 will be around $5.5 billion—just one-tenth of its 2021 peak—with gaming accounting for nearly 40%. Ticketing is only a tiny corner of the market.
Chiliz, which issues fan tokens for sports and entertainment IP, does specify in some partnership agreements what happens if an event is canceled or rescheduled. But music venues have always been a peripheral part of its business, not its main focus.
I’m inclined to think that the root cause of tickets being so hard to get is simply the shortage itself. 5.02 million people competing for 22,020 tickets—that’s a gap of more than 200 times, and no technology can make it disappear. Blockchain can do only two things: make resale records transparent and cap resale prices. Both are worthwhile, but neither can close the gap.
What really turns scalpers’ tickets into worthless scraps is facial recognition. It binds the ticket to its holder in the most low-tech way possible—and that’s exactly what Web3 has spent years trying to achieve with non-transferable tokens.
I don’t know which technological approach will win in the end. For now, this ticketing problem has been solved through administrative measures.
$CHZ $FLOW $BTC #币安广场 #肖战演唱会 #区块链票务 #FanEconomy
This was Xiao Zhan’s first solo tour in the ten years since his debut. The opening stop was Nanjing, with shows on October 23 and 25.
Before tickets went on sale, more than 5.02 million people had registered interest in that stop alone—a record for a mainland China concert this year. The chance of getting a ticket was less than 0.5%.
There were six price tiers, from 390 yuan at the low end to 1,960 yuan at the high end. The day before tickets went on sale, a set of screenshots surfaced online. The first row was listed at 250,000 yuan, followed by two words: “Sold out.” The second row was 200,000 yuan, and the third was 190,000 yuan.
Based on face value, that first-row ticket had been marked up more than 120 times.
On the afternoon of the 15th, Damai issued a statement saying the exorbitantly priced tickets were fake, and that scalpers were maliciously driving up prices despite having no tickets at all. It said the leads had been handed over to the relevant authorities. In the same report, The Paper added that the authenticity of the screenshot itself had yet to be verified.
I don’t know whether the 250,000-yuan price reflected a real sale or was made up by scalpers to drive prices up. Damai says scalpers don’t have tickets, but it hasn’t released any data on scalper sales. For now, I can only take that claim with a grain of salt.
One thing is clear. When Xiao Zhan’s studio signed its contract with Damai, it voluntarily gave up the 15% of tickets that organizers can typically reserve under industry convention, putting them all into the public ticket pool. The contract also specified that there would be no internal or employee tickets. Entry required a three-way match between the person, ticket, and ID: the original ID card, e-ticket, and facial recognition all had to match. Tickets couldn’t be transferred or gifted, and the attendee couldn’t be changed. Each account could buy no more than two tickets.
The rules had one purpose: to bind the ticket to its holder. Even if scalpers managed to get tickets, they couldn’t pass them on to concertgoers.
Meanwhile, blockchain ticketing has long been touted as a way to fight scalpers. The logic sounds straightforward: put tickets on a blockchain so every resale is traceable, and hard-code a price ceiling into the contract so tickets can’t be resold at a markup.
The reality is less rosy. In 2023, ticketing giant Ticketmaster ran a pilot with a band’s fan club, issuing around 10,000 tokens that let holders buy tickets early. About 1,000 tickets were sold through that window. The NBA’s Sacramento Kings also worked with two platforms, LAVA and Flow, on NFT passes.
The problem is that neither project has released independently audited data demonstrating that it actually curbed scalping at scale. Industry trackers estimate that NFT trading volume for all of 2026 will be around $5.5 billion—just one-tenth of its 2021 peak—with gaming accounting for nearly 40%. Ticketing is only a tiny corner of the market.
Chiliz, which issues fan tokens for sports and entertainment IP, does specify in some partnership agreements what happens if an event is canceled or rescheduled. But music venues have always been a peripheral part of its business, not its main focus.
I’m inclined to think that the root cause of tickets being so hard to get is simply the shortage itself. 5.02 million people competing for 22,020 tickets—that’s a gap of more than 200 times, and no technology can make it disappear. Blockchain can do only two things: make resale records transparent and cap resale prices. Both are worthwhile, but neither can close the gap.
What really turns scalpers’ tickets into worthless scraps is facial recognition. It binds the ticket to its holder in the most low-tech way possible—and that’s exactly what Web3 has spent years trying to achieve with non-transferable tokens.
I don’t know which technological approach will win in the end. For now, this ticketing problem has been solved through administrative measures.
$CHZ $FLOW $BTC #币安广场 #肖战演唱会 #区块链票务 #FanEconomy