One Tech Tip: How to avoid Celine Dion ticket scams as she makes her grand concert comeback

The Grammy-winning star’s long-awaited return to the concert stage after years away from touring has unleashed massive pent-up demand for tickets. It’s a perfect storm for scammers who have wormed their way into fans’ online communities and set up fraudulent ticketing websites to manipulate and rob fans of both their money and hopes of being able to say, “I was there.”

For the few tickets left, use only authorized sites

The Plenitude Arena, hosting Dion for 16 dates in September and October and another 10 in May, says the highest risk of scams is when tickets first go on sale — which was April for the upcoming concerts and June for the 2027 series — and in the shows’ immediate build-up.

“People are going to wake up and think, ‘Oh, right, I didn’t get a ticket, everyone is going, I want to go,’ or ‘I’ve seen the first show all over social media, it looks amazing, I’m going to find a ticket by any means possible.’ And that’s also when the scammers will be out in force.”

One other possibility is to buy tickets from people who no longer want theirs. But the only way to do that safely is on three sites that are authorized for resales: AXS France, T icketmaster France and Fnac Spectacles, Trioux said.

There are unlikely to be many of those. Generally, just 4% to 8% of people who buy tickets for the arena end up not wanting or not being able to use them.

“I strongly advise against buying a ticket from an individual or from someone advertising it on social media, because there’s no way to know whether it’s genuine or whether the same ticket will also be sold to other people,” Trioux said.

The arena says it will help fraud victims

The concert series is a major milestone for the 58-year-old Quebec-born singer, her first since she revealed in 2022 her diagnosis with stiff-person syndrome, a rare neurological disorder. She last performed briefly in Paris at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in 2024, wowing with “Hymne à l’amour” (Hymn to love) from atop the Eiffel Tower in the rain.…Read more by JOHN LEICESTER