profiteers are hoping to make a quick franc by buying up lots of tickets.
Keystone-SDA
The Eurovision Song Contest shows are in high demand, with the result that profiteers are hoping to make a quick franc by buying up lots of tickets. The Swiss organisers are making life difficult for them as best they can.
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Before the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Basel in May, some people are trying to make money by buying up tickets en masse. Hundreds of thousands of fake accounts have been used to pre-register for tickets for the shows. Thomas Pittino, head of marketing at the ESC, told Swiss public broadcaster, SRF.
Almost 500,000 registrations have been received. However, only around 50,000 to 60,000 seats are available for visitors at the nine planned shows. “You have to assume that between a third and half of the registrations are bots, i.e. fake accounts,” said Pittino. These will now be filtered out, he said.
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Registration expired on January 10 at midnight. Those who are successfully registered will be able to buy their first tickets from 10am on January 29. They cost between CHF40 ($44) and CHF350.
SRF is organising the song competition this year because Nemo won for Switzerland last year. Currently 38 countries are taking part. The final will take place on May 17 in Basel’s St. Jakobshalle.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
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