What’s been an ongoing, irritating trend for any fan trying to purchase tickets via Ticketmaster recently has now affected VALORANT fans looking to attend the first international tournament to be held in North America. Bots have already cleaned up a huge number of tickets for the final days of Champions 2023 for the purposes of reselling them.
VALORANT Champions 2023, the third world championship for the steadily rising first-person shooter from Riot Games, will end the year at the Kia Forum in California for the final three days from Aug. 24 to 26, with the grand finals taking place on the last date, a Saturday. But tickets for the grand final day were sold out less than an hour after general admission went live today.
To further rub dirt in the wounds of would-be attendees who wanted to see the finale of the 2023 season, it appears that hundreds of these final-day tickets have been gobbled up by scalpers using bots to grab tickets before anyone else solely to resell them. Looking at the current listings for the final day, only “verified resale tickets” are available to purchase, all of which are dramatically marked up.
Related: VALORANT coach boycotts ranked until Riot addresses smurf scourge
The cheapest resale tickets for seats way up in the “nosebleed section” have been marked up over $200. For context, prior to going live on Ticketmaster, Riot announced that the lowest-priced seats for the final day would be between $40 to $60, with the highest maxing out at $240. At time of writing, there are only roughly a dozen seats at all that are less than $240, and the “best seats” according to Ticketmaster cost anywhere from $500 to an astonishing $2,000.
There are numerous official standard tickets still available for the days prior to the grand final.
Related: Best VALORANT teams yet to win an international trophy
VALORANT fans now feel the sting that numerous fan groups have felt while using Ticketmaster in recent years, an issue that grabbed significant mainstream attention when the fiasco surrounding Taylor Swift tour tickets drew calls from members of the U.S. Congress to take action.
