‘Carter is in tears’: Origin fans turned away from Suncorp Stadium, blame ticket hack

A Brisbane woman says she and her son were turned away from the State of Origin decider at Suncorp Stadium after hackers accessed her Ticketek account and resold their tickets without her knowledge.

Nicola Healey from Griffin, north of Brisbane, arrived at Suncorp Stadium with her 11-year-old son Carter decked out in their Maroons gear on Wednesday night only to be turned away at the gates.

But after a day of media headlines, there has been a twist, with Healey revealing she had spoken to Ticketek’s managing director about her situation.

A devastated 11-year-old Carter McPherson on the train home from Suncorp Stadium.

“My Ticketek account was hacked and my tickets were put up on Ticketek Marketplace and resold,” she said on Wednesday night. “My poor son is devastated. This was his birthday present, purchased in February.”

Healey said at the stadium she was directed to join a long queue of punters, where she was told she had listed her tickets on Ticketek Marketplace.

“I said, ‘no I did not!’”

The ticket office could not offer any remedy, directing her to police, she said.

“I even asked [if they could] take us up to our original seats and kick [out] whoever was there. They said, ‘No, we can’t do that, they own the seats now.’”

Her devastated son was in tears as they left the stadium.

“I spoke to a dad and his son on the way back to the train who had the same issue. I saw at least five groups get told their tickets were cancelled, and the line had at least 100 people waiting who were sent from the gates to the box office,” she said.

Later on Wednesday night, she posted a screenshot to Facebook appearing to show that tickets she had bought to a Billie Eilish concert had also been sold.

Healey said later on Thursday the company’s managing director had reached out to her, promising to return her tickets to Billie Eilish, offering tickets on the sideline for the upcoming Broncos clash with the Bulldogs, and refunding the Origin tickets.

Carter went on KIIS radio this morning, where he met and chatted with Broncos star Corey Oates. His mother said she had also made a cyber fraud complaint.

“Hopefully the bank account can track down where the hackers are coming from and shut them down,” Healey said. “Never mess with a mumma bear with an upset baby.”

In a joint statement, Ticketek and Suncorp Stadium said 2,000 tickets to Origin III were identified as having been sold by scalpers.

While it is standard practice to cancel scalped tickets, the NRL, Suncorp Stadium and Ticketek decided that “because of the large number involved”, they would reactivate the barcodes and allow ticket holders in.

“Separately there was a report from a patron who was of the belief that her Ticketek account had been hacked,” the statement said.

“The Ticketek system has not been compromised and it is believed that this patron may be a victim of a cyber attack on her own personal accounts and serves as another timely reminder to be vigilant and practice cyber security.”

Asked on Thursday about reports of similar incidents, Queensland Deputy Police Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon said they were concerning.

“That’s a distressing thing for anybody, particularly when you’ve paid out significant amounts of money, so those things need to be addressed and reported,” she said.

“It’s very disappointing to hear that, it’s very disappointing for the organisers of those events, but also if you’re a mum and dad and you’ve paid out good money for something ... if that’s the case, we’d expect there would be reports today to us.”

Scanlon said it was best to buy tickets off legitimate and reputable suppliers.

Ticketek Marketplace is a secondary site operated by Ticketek that enables people to legally resell and buy tickets for up to 10 per cent more than their original face value.

Once tickets are resold, the original barcode is cancelled.

Ticketek was the target of a major data hack last month, which exposed the private details of thousands of customers.

At the time, Ticketek said information belonging to Australian customers, including names, birth dates and email addresses, had been taken from a platform “hosted by a reputable, global third-party supplier”.