People looking to get into Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour without a valid ticket, beware.
On Monday (March 4), security staff at the Singapore Sports Hub detained several individuals attempting to trespass into the National Stadium, a joint statement by Kallang Alive Sport Management and the Singapore Police Force stated.
"Three men, aged between 29 and 45 years old, were arrested for cheating offences relating to concert tickets," the statement continued. "Another two women and two men, aged between 21 and 25 years old, are assisting with investigations in relation to the offence of criminal trespass.
"Police investigations are ongoing."
Two of the men, identified as Chinese nationals Yang Chenguang, 29, and Li Xiaowei, 45, were charged in court today. Yang allegedly distracted a security officer while Li held onto a turnstile to let three others — named in the charge sheet as Shangguan Linmo, Hu Zhijun and Yang Junhao — enter.
Yang and Li will be remanded for investigations and return to court on March 13. The third man hasn't been charged.
Elysia Koh, who goes by _Catastrophe_13 on X (formerly known as Twitter), witnessed a similar occurrence of tailgating on March 2, the first day of The Eras Tour, and shared about it in response to a post by the official X page for The Eras Tour Singapore.
The 17-year-old student told AsiaOne today that she also encountered two men then. One allegedly stood at the gantries and talked to people, presumably security staff or ushers, inside the venue while another was "holding the turnstile gate open for a group of people to squeeze in".
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Koh also alleged that the second man was "nudging people to use certain gantries" and "rushing to get people to do so", and physically pushed her to use a particular turnstile.
"At that point I already had suspicions that he was going to tailgate me," she explained. "However, I was already at the front of the queue and I had no choice but to scan my ticket in.
"After I got in, I turned around and saw the man holding the gantry open, while a group of them (at least 3 people, men and women) squeezed in through the tiny gap present when he held the gantry open."
Koh felt "really enraged" that the group not only managed to get in, but also receive the blue wristbands to enter the floor seating area. She believed that "they definitely deserved to get caught".
She added: "I believe that they managed to get away on that day because the ushers were not security and they could not really do much."
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drimac@asiaone.com
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