Chappell Roan Says She’s Canceling Scalper-Bought Tickets for Tennessee Show, Offers Fans an Alternative Shot at Getting In
Chappell Roan is telling fans that her team has canceled tickets to an upcoming show in Franklin, Tenn., that they believe were bought by scalpers or bots — and she has put up a link to a special Ticketmaster page she said will allow “people who actually want to come” to have a shot at purchasing the recovered tickets.
“Hello, Franklin, Tennessee,” the rising pop star said in a video posted to her Instagram Stories. “My show at Firstbank Amphitheatre on Oct. 1 sold out really quickly and we figured out why: scalpers and bots just bought up all the tickets. So we went through and canceled all the scalper tickets we could, so from that we’re going to release a limited number of tickets to you, because I want to make sure that tickets go to people who actually want to come and, like, our fans.”
More from Variety
The new page she touted as an alternate way for real fans to possibly pick up tickets for the Oct. 1 show, Chappellroan.request.ticketmaster.com, is through Ticketmaster… but is not to be confused with the standard Ticketmaster page for the concert, which continues to show the gig as sold out.
Tickets for the concert in Franklin, a city just south of Nashville, are of considerable national interest because Roan, indisputably one of the hottest artists in America at the moment, has only a handful of shows on the books in the U.S. at the present time, with any larger tour yet to be announced.
Roan says the tickets that were canceled will be reallocated to real fans, but didn’t specify how many will be made available. In any case, the demand is likely to be many, many times whatever supply will become available. So, with the new page that has been set up, potential buyers who make it through the queue will be asked to submit their information and informed later if they have been selected to get tickets.
As part of these submissions for what sounds effectively like a ticket lottery, fans are being required to submit payment information in case their requests do end up being processed. Roan indicated in her video statement that this will help keep scalpers from once again obtaining the reallocated tickets.
“You need to pick your preferred tickets and then put in a payment method,” Roan says in the video. “I know it sounds so weird but this is the only way we’re figuring out how to deal with it. You will only be charged if your request is fulfilled, so you’ll only get charged if you actually get tickets. This is the best solution that makes sense to me and my team. I know it’s confusing and it’s so annoying, but I genuinely am so pissed about the scalper situation and think that people actually deserve tickets to my show.
“This is a larger issue,” she concluded. “We’re dealing with it. But thank you for understanding, and I can’t wait to see people who deserve to be here. It means everything to me. So, mwah — thank you so much.”
There is not a great deal of precedent for artists announcing they have identified and canceled tickets bought for the intention of reselling, but Eric Church is one such singer who blazed this anti-scalper path prior to Roan. In 2017, the country star announced he had canceled more than 25,000 tickets that had been sold for a tour, saying he was putting them back on sale with the hope of them going directly to fans. Church had previously done it on a small scale for individual shows. “They buy thousands of tickets across the U.S., not just mine, and they end up making a fortune,” Church said of resellers at the time. “They use fake credit cards, fake IDs. All of this is fraud.”
Although Roan made it sound as if she was inquisitive about the quick sellout in Tennessee, it’s safe to say virtually any show she would put on sale now would sell out quickly, with or without bots. Besides the Franklin, Tenn. concert, Roan currently has just four other stops on the books for the U.S., which will undoubtedly see fans flying in from other cities. Two of these are individual headlining shows, set for Oct. 2 in Rogers, Arkansas, and Oct. 3 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The other two are festival gigs, first at the All Things Go Festival in Columbia, Maryland, the weekend of Sept. 28-29, followed by two shows at the Austin City Limits Festival on Oct. 6 and 13.
Roan’s future touring plans are the subject of considerable speculation, with headlining arenas throughout 2025 an obvious possibility for an artist whose popularity has grown exponentially since she began touring as Olivia Rodrigo’s opening act in February.
Her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” got off to a slow start after being released in September 2023, but she has become the buzziest new pop star of 2024, with the album being a constant presence in the top 5 in recent weeks.
Roan is as hot in Europe as she is in America. She recently canceled one European gig and postponed two others in the run-up to the MTV Video Music Awards Sept. 11, on which she will have what is arguably the most anticipated performance of the night.
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.