Third-party brokers selling ‘spec tickets’ for Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ tour, Ticketmaster warns​on February 8, 2025 at 6:51 am

CHICAGO (WLS) — There is I-Team Consumer alert for those looking to buy concert tickets for Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” tour, which go on sale next week.

A practice known as “speculative ticketing” is when brokers resell tickets they think they will be getting before those tickets officially go on sale.

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Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’em” is just one of the singles making the Cowboy Carter album so popular and a Grammy winner. Now, Ticketmaster says that popularity is also fueling speculative ticketing for her upcoming Cowboy Carter tour.

The problem with speculative ticketing is those third-parties are selling what they don’t yet have, Ticketmaster says.

Tickets to her Chicago shows in May are being sold by third-party brokers before they officially go on sale next week. So if you buy “spec tickets,” are you taking a gamble?

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“If you just take the artist and put a Google search for tickets to that show, you will see that there are ticket listings on a number of resale sites, not Ticketmaster, but a lot of resale sites that are telling you that they already have tickets that they can sell you… and they don’t,” said Daniel Wall with Live Nation Entertainment.

Wall is the executive vice president for corporate and regulatory affairs at Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster. He said third-party brokers are selling tickets which they don’t yet have, like Beyoncé floor seats at Soldier Field for thousands of dollars.

Ticketmaster even issued an alert on X.

“You’re taking a big risk, there’s no way that that site can deliver the tickets that you think you’re going to get,” Wall said.

Many third-party websites say they have guarantees and that you will get tickets, but Wall said you could end up in a different section or pay more than you should.

“The idea behind it is that between the time that you buy those tickets at a very high price, and the show, they’re going to try to cover you with something sort of close to what you bought,” Wall said. “Never what you thought you were buying, but something that is close to it.”