Stranger Things fans face pricey resale tickets for the show finale’s theatrical release

If you managed to nock tickets to follow the alien Things coda in theatres on wed or Thursday, count yourself lucky. Plenty of fans are still trying their luck to pick up resale tickets on social media sites, where they’re going for much more than their face value price.

The series finale of the long-running sci-fi show drops on Netflix at 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday, in addition to a theatrical release in select theatres across Canada and the United States.

Tickets, which went on sale on Dec. 2 for $11 each, include a concession stand voucher for $11 due to constraints with talent residuals, meaning theatre-goers will ultimately break even on the event purchase.

According to Cineplex, which is hosting many of the Canadian screenings, tickets for the events country-wide sold out “almost immediately."

Landmark Cinemas is also showing the finale, and its website shows seats are all or nearly sold out across the country, too.

That’s left fans like Omar Hassanali of Mississauga, Ont., scouring Facebook Marketplace for seats in a theatre.

He said he didn’t learn that the finale was going to air in theatres until a few days after tickets went on sale, and by the time he tried to snag some, there were only a handful available – mostly solo seats or ones close to the screen.

Hassanali’s kids, who are now 13 and 15 years old, have been catching up on the previous seasons now that they’re old enough to enjoy the show with him, and he was hoping they would get to experience the event alongside other excited fans.

“It's also giving the kids that experience ... Of looking forward to seeing something epic in the movie theatre,” he said. €œIf something spectacular happens and everybody is, you know, gasping in shock, it adds something to the experience.”

Most of the resellers have offered him tickets at $50 each. €œSome nicer people have [offered] $25 and the most expensive is $200” per ticket, said Hassanali, who was looking for six tickets for his family of four plus two cousins.

As the finale gets closer, some sellers on Facebook Marketplace are dropping their listing prices to the face-value cost, but a number of ads are still listing tickets for $50 each or as high as $100 each, as are ads by people searching for tickets. On Reddit, fans of the show have decried the reselling as “unfair” and some said they’ve been reporting the sellers.

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While fans of live music and sports events have come to expect ticket resale for high-profile events, Vass Bednar, managing director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute, a non-partisan think-tank, said reselling is somewhat less common for events at the theatre.

Tickets for events like Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film or the Kpop Demon Hunters theatrical release drew big crowds but didn’t sell out in the same way, as there were lots of showings for those releases. 

Similar reselling has plagued the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in recent years, however, with tickets for buzzy films being resold for hundreds of dollars and prompting backlash from fans.

“Part of why we don't see more reselling at the movie theatre is because movie theatres don't own and operate a secondary ecosystem,” Bednar said — unlike Ticketmaster, which allows users to resell verified tickets through that platform and gives them a chance to profit “not just once but twice or sometimes more than that” when secondary sales happen on the platform. 

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TIFF does use Ticketmaster for its ticket sales, but most cinemas like Cineplex don’t have similar reselling capabilities.

It’s also a matter of supply and demand, Bednar said. Because most movies don’t sell out, reselling wouldn’t make those buying up tickets any money, meaning reselling activity in theatres is limited to specialty events, like an epic TV series finale.

Even if reselling isn’t a constant at the movie theatre, Hassanali said seeing resellers attempting to turn a profit from smaller events where they might make only $20 or $30 reselling each ticket is disappointing.

“Anything that’s ticketed and limited, it's happening,” Hassanali said of reselling. €œIt really does start to kind of burn a bit more because you’d think there would be some sort of level where it doesn't make sense to [resell] or it's safe from this sort of ticket scalping ... But I guess not.”

Cineplex says it has measures in place to try to curb ticket reselling, including limits on the number of tickets an individual user can buy.

“As the popularity of these special events continues to grow, we are actively exploring additional steps to ensure fair access for fans,” Saba said in a statement.

Bednar said there are other, more extreme measures theatres could take to curb this kind of activity, but those come with costs.

“You'd have to essentially digitally tether the ticket to the purchaser ... To prevent them from reselling it,” Bednar said.

U.K. Government to ban ticket resales above face value

Governments elsewhere have tried to legally block reselling — like in the U.K., where politicians recently proposed laws that would bar resellers from listing tickets for all kinds of events for more than face value. But those controls are also made possible in part by ticketing companies operating the reselling platforms.

And while more extreme measures would help, Bednar said it's important to think about whether that might make buying movie tickets feel more “draconian,” or make it harder for regular fans to transfer a ticket to a friend or get rid of it if they simply can’t attend.

After weeks of searching, Hassanali finally secured six tickets at face value for a Jan. 1 screening for his family, and he said he's looking forward to experiencing the event together.

For fans still hoping to see the finale in person, Cineplex says a very limited number of tickets will still be available only at the-theatre. And while its not a theatre experience, a handful of bars and restaurants from Toronto to Vancouver are also hosting watch parties for the episode.

Journalist

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