Ticketmaster Cancels Scalped Olivia Rodrigo Tickets and Reissues Them to Fans at Face Value
Ticketmaster has cancelled a batch of tickets to Olivia Rodrigo's The Unraveled Tour after identifying that they breached purchase terms, and is reissuing them to fans at the original prices set by the tour.
The company announced the cancellations on Thursday, August 20, in a post on Instagram, according to Music Business Worldwide. Ticketmaster said the cancelled tickets violated the purchase terms attached to the on-sale, which appeared to involve attempted resale at increased prices on the secondary market — the platforms where tickets are resold, often above face value.
Fans had to apply for the reissued tickets through a request window that closed on Friday, August 21, at 11:59pm ET. Ticketmaster said it prioritised fans who did not already hold tickets to the tour, with remaining requests to be randomised and filled according to availability and seating preferences selected. Requests were capped at four tickets per event and up to two events per country, across separate US and Canada request pages.
Applicants whose requests can be filled will be notified on or before Friday, August 28, at which point their card will be charged. All sales are final.
A separate release of Silver Star tickets — a low-price tier Rodrigo introduced on her previous GUTS World Tour, where they were USD $20 each — opens for requests on September 1 at 3pm ET, priced at USD $25 per ticket. On the GUTS tour, Silver Star tickets were sold only in pairs, with a maximum of two per purchase. Buyers are not told where their seats are until they collect the tickets at the venue box office on the day of the show, a measure designed to keep the tickets out of the resale market.
The Unraveled Tour, in support of Rodrigo's album you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, opens on September 25 at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford, Connecticut, and runs across North America, Europe and the UK into 2027.
The ticket clawback follows a template Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation applied to the Oasis reunion tour, MBW reported. During the 2023 on-sale for Rodrigo's GUTS World Tour, Ticketmaster withheld tickets until 72 hours before each show and issued them electronically only — another anti-scalping tactic that delays delivery so resale is harder to execute before the event.
For fans, the upshot is that a portion of tickets caught being flipped above face value is being pulled back and redirected to people who want to attend, not resell. Whether the approach deters scalpers at scale across a tour running into 2027 is a question the remaining dates will answer.
