In recent years, as the performance market continues to heat up, issues such as difficulty in refunding performance tickets and high handling fees have frequently attracted attention.
In August last year, the "Analysis of Complaints Accepted by National Consumers Association Organizations in the First Half of 2025" released by the China Consumers Association showed that the number of concert-related complaints continued to rise, with 90% of them involving refund claims. In the first half of this year, the Black Cat Complaints Platform received more than 23,000 entertainment ticketing complaints, of which offline performances such as concerts and music festivals accounted for nearly 80%.
Why is it so difficult to cancel a performance ticket? How should all parties work together to improve the refund mechanism? The reporter conducted an interview on this.
"Does not support returns and exchanges" has become a "stumbling block"
The show's ticket sales page is counting down, and the ticket opening time is approaching second by second. Xixi, a post-00s girl in Shanghai, is staring at the screen and is mentally prepared for "failure" - if she fails to grab a ticket, she will read other people's impressions and imagine the wonderful scene of the performance.
"0 hours, 0 minutes and 0 seconds"! Click on the show, select seats, refresh the page, select seats again... After a lot of operations, Xixi got it! Surprisingly, the two friends who helped her get tickets also won seats for the other two performances.
Next, the worry of "fear of running out of tickets" turned into the worry of "how to deal with excess tickets."
Some people may be curious, why can’t performance tickets be refunded as easily as high-speed rail tickets? In fact, many live performances indicate "returns and exchanges are not supported". Audiences like Xixi can only choose to digest the difficulties on their own when encountering this situation.
Xiao Ta from Jiangsu once purchased a ticket for a stage play one month in advance. However, a few days before the show started, the company arranged a business trip, so Xiao Ta applied for a refund on the platform, but was told that the organizer did not open a refund channel. As a last resort, he had to post a ticket transfer post on the social media platform.
In life, most viewers whose tickets cannot be refunded choose to issue their tickets through the secondary market just like Xiaota. Ms. Guo, who often attends performances and lives in Beijing, told reporters that they will spontaneously form a "ticketing group" with the theme of plays, theaters, actors, etc. to facilitate the exchange of information.
"Some performances have not yet premiered or announced their cast (cast) when the tickets were issued, and the audience had high expectations and enthusiastically rushed to grab tickets. However, later they found that the performances did not meet expectations, and they were unable to refund the tickets, so they had to sell them at the original price or at a discount in the group. In many cases, although the tickets were disposed of, they also lost a lot of money." Ms. Guo said frankly.
The reporter also learned that some professional "scalpers" and some viewers who want to make a profit have no demand for watching performances, but they hoard tickets for popular performances and sell them to people in need at high prices.
Risk control results are paid by consumers
Generally speaking, the platform will only accept refunds if the performance is canceled or postponed due to force majeure such as weather, temporary changes in the cast, or the audience is unable to attend due to health reasons. In other cases, refund applications will almost always be rejected.
Ma Lihong, senior partner and lawyer at Beijing Deheheng Law Firm, pointed out that objectively speaking, this behavior does have business and risk control considerations on the part of the platform and the organizer.
"Organizers must consider time-sensitive sunk cost risks. Venues, artists, equipment, and publicity costs all need to be prepaid in advance; performance ticketing involves multiple parties such as the organizer, platform, brokerage, and venue. A large number of refunds will directly lead to vacant seats, unrecoverable costs, and will also disrupt the completed fund pre-allocation process. Furthermore, the platform commission is linked to the total ticket sales, and ticket refunds will reduce the platform's revenue and increase the operating costs of post-sales manual review and refund compensation. "Ma Lihong said that if the refund mechanism is too loose, it will bring operating losses to the platform and the organizer, so strict refund rules are a passive risk control method.
Even so, the results of risk control should not be borne by consumers. Liao Huaixue, a senior partner and lawyer at Tahota Law Firm, believes that consumers buying performance tickets are essentially entering into a service contract with the organizer. The platform unilaterally sets "returns and exchanges are not supported" and "once sold, no returns or exchanges", which are legally standard terms. According to the provisions of the Civil Code and other laws, when a contract is concluded using standard clauses, the party providing the standard clauses should follow the principle of fairness to determine the rights and obligations between the parties, and use reasonable methods to remind the other party of the terms that have a significant interest in the other party, such as exempting or reducing its liability, and explain the terms according to the requirements of consumers. In other words, if a format clause unreasonably limits or even deprives consumers of their main rights, it may be deemed invalid even if a reminder is provided. To a certain extent, the non-refundable check is a kind of "overlord clause".
"One order with multiple tickets can only be refunded as a whole, not individually" is also a standard clause. Zheng Ning, director of the Law Department of the School of Cultural Industry Management of Communication University of China, pointed out that multiple tickets under the same order correspond to independent performance services. Seats and viewing rights are not dependent on each other and are separable contracts. Forcibly bundling refunds without justifiable reasons still limits consumers' statutory right to terminate.
When applying for a refund, the platform claimed that "due to the timeliness, scarcity and other characteristics of the cultural services behind the tickets, tickets will not be refunded." Ma Lihong said that performance tickets should be legally positioned as prepaid service contract vouchers rather than ordinary commodities. "Consumers are purchasing future performance services. When the service is unacceptable for reasonable reasons, the operator does not have the right to directly confiscate the entire advance payment." As long as consumers purchase performance tickets, they have the right to apply for a refund, and at least a certain percentage of the refund can be applied for.
Many viewers interviewed said that in reality, the platform not only refuses to refund, but also gives reasons for "needing to communicate with the organizer", so that viewers "cannot refund even if they ask" and "don't know who has the money", so they have no way to protect their rights.
Zheng Ning believes that when platforms collect ticket payments from consumers, they should provide performance services in accordance with the requirements of the network service contract, and cannot shirk their legal responsibilities by saying "I only sell tickets on my behalf." "If the platform has clearly marked the refund rules and clearly stated the organizer's information, and the consumer still pays after knowing it, then although the platform may not necessarily bear the physical responsibility for the refund, it should still assist consumers in safeguarding their rights."
Obviously, some platforms understand the situation of buyers and sellers and should build a communication bridge between consumers and organizers. In practice, when disputes arise, they often "stay out of the matter." This shows that there is a problem of unclear rights and responsibilities in the field of performance ticketing, and the audience becomes the biggest victim of this problem.
Multi-party governance solves refund dilemma
How to further improve the refund mechanism so that consumers can "buy with confidence and refund with comfort" requires regulatory authorities, organizers, ticketing platforms, industry associations and other entities to jointly explore.
"Regulatory departments should assume the responsibility of supervising and enforcing laws, clarify the division of labor, and coordinate efforts." Ma Lihong suggested establishing a cross-departmental joint complaint handling channel, incorporating ticketing compliance into the corporate credit disclosure system, and transforming paper regulations into normalized constraints.
Organizers and ticketing platforms should clarify the boundaries of rights and responsibilities and further optimize refund policies. Experts interviewed all believe that organizers should effectively assume the primary responsibility, formulate fair, transparent, and enforceable rules for refunds and changes, and should not set "overlord clauses" such as "no returns or exchanges" to properly handle reasonable requests for refunds from consumers. In terms of the platform, it should fulfill its obligations of information disclosure and prompts, and fully and clearly disclose the organizer's information, refund conditions, etc. in a prominent position on the ticket purchase page to ensure that consumers are fully informed before payment; improve technical support and build official transfer and refund channels.
Many consumers also reported that refunds and rights protection often fall into the dilemma of AI customer service loop response and difficulty in transferring to manual services. Liao Huaixue pointed out that it is the obligation of operators to provide consumers with convenient and effective manual services, and they must not use AI customer service to set up communication barriers or evade legal responsibilities.
"Platforms should take the initiative to improve the after-sales and dispute resolution mechanism, establish convenient and smooth complaint reporting channels, and reduce the cost of consumer rights protection when disputes arise between the two parties." Liao Huaixue said.
In September 2023, the "Notice on Further Strengthening the Standardized Management of Large-scale Commercial Performance Activities to Promote the Healthy and Orderly Development of the Performance Market" was issued, clearly stating that "Performance organizers should establish a refund mechanism for large-scale performance events, set reasonable tiered refund fees, and protect the legitimate rights of ticket buyers." However, in actual operation, the performance ticketing industry still lacks unified refund and change regulations.
"Industry associations should take the lead in formulating national unified industry standards for performance ticket refunds, refining stepped refunds, establishing a blacklist of industry dishonesty, and organizing practitioners to carry out compliance training." Ma Lihong said that they can jointly publish typical cases with the Consumers Association, provide industry notification to non-compliant member units, and implement joint restraints by restricting industry resource cooperation and other methods.
For consumers, they should enhance their awareness of risk prevention and consume rationally. Zheng Ning reminded that consumers should read the refund rules carefully before placing orders and keep their consumption vouchers. If you encounter problems such as unreasonable refund rejections and abnormally high handling fees, you can complain to the relevant departments.
Resolving refund disputes not only protects the rights and interests of consumers, but is also an inevitable choice for the industry to develop towards refinement and standardization. Only by joining forces from all parties and issuing unified and complete rules can we create a warmer consumption environment, so that refunds for performances will no longer be a burden to the audience.
Reporters: Wang Jingyue Ni Jiahui
