Pay 500 euros to be mistreated at a concert

In the first Bad Bunny concert in Barcelona, fans who had paid five hundred euros to enjoy the show from the VIP area posted very distressing videos on social media. Trapped in a supposedly privileged space, they were compressed, with no possibility of moving. They were stuck against each other as if they were traveling on the worst Renfe routes. Some videos showed people crushed against the fences, asking staff for help to leave that place, lamenting an inhumane situation that barely allowed them to breathe. The organization has contradicted the complaints, but, in any case, the situation for fans who had spent the equivalent of a month's rent for a small apartment to see Bad Bunny seemed more like an ordeal than a night of euphoria.

In recent years, concerts by big music stars have become an excuse to mistreat fans. A few decades ago, the maximum penalty for buying tickets consisted of queuing up in the early morning at the doors of a shopping center, with a certain guarantee that if you did it in enough time, you would get them.

Now, big concerts already involve, at least, absurd hours of preliminaries in front of the computer. A network of family and friends must be mobilized who have to access questionable virtual waiting rooms. Nothing assures you that that stratospheric waste of time, very often during working hours, will end with the purchase of a miserable ticket. Hours pending a countdown until a frantic click-fest begins that makes you dizzy through different areas of the stands. That's if you're lucky, because after three hours, the system might decide to expel you because a few thousand people have passed you in the queue. Or it might offer you to buy tickets in a stand where there are no more seats. And you are expelled from the system again. Or they confuse you with an incomprehensible jargon of options: Early entry, Fast lane, First access, Golden circle, Front row package, Pit access, Meet & Greet, Platinum tickets, Diamond package or Hospitality package so that the most desperate leave their salary in exchange for some guarantee. A few weeks ago, Olivia Rodrigo offered a so-called secret concert at the Teatre Grec with limited capacity where, theoretically, fans who accumulated the most hours of streaming the artist's songs were prioritized. People who received an invitation that summoned them to the exclusive and private Spotify event. They were warned that this invitation did not guarantee access to the venue. The doors would close when the capacity was reached. After hours and hours of queuing, the announcement that entry was no longer possible was communicated to the poor fans minutes before the start of the concert. The invitations not only far exceeded the existing seats but also, among the long list of celebrities, influencers, companions, and other marketing concessions, the actual spots were much fewer than offered. This mistreatment of the fan is a very media-friendly showcase of collective anxiety. A hysteria that creates expectation. Inflating queues, stimulating desperation on social media, and generating frustration is the way to manufacture the famous FOMO. Provoking people's catharsis, showing their suffering, their ability to grovel, stimulates the idea that it is unique, extraordinary, and historic. The media feeds it.

Major concerts have become sacrificial experiences where the fan is subjected to atrocious segregation, with unheard-of ticket hierarchies of abusive prices, appealing to supposed non-existent comforts. Their resilience, also economic, is tested, squeezing their possibilities. The opacity of reselling is flagrant and institutionalized through official portals. The fan is subjected to logistical humiliation worthy of the most voracious capitalism. They have turned the fan into a docile and mistreated customer willing to do anything in exchange for "I was there".