Why You Should Never Post Photos of Your Concert + Photo Passes

It’s understandable to be excited about attending or working at an upcoming concert, but you should never post photos of your concert passes or laminates on social media regardless of what your position is. Here’s why.

Most concerts have digital tickets nowadays, but some vendors still give out physical ticket stubs, especially when they’re picked up at will call. And if you work in the music industry and have an assignment for a concert or a tour, you typically get some sort of pass or laminate that states your position so that security grants you access to certain parts of the venue.

Whether you’re a fan going to a show or an industry professional, you should never share photos of your tickets or passes online. There are a few reasons why, which we’ll get into below.

People Can Replicate Them

It’s too easy to make counterfeit materials now, thanks to technology. All people have to do is see a photo of either a ticket stub or a pass to replicate them, and this can lead to a variety of issues.

Firstly, if a person creates a fake version of your ticket but successfully reproduces the barcode, they could potentially bypass the scanner at the venue. Once a ticket is scanned, it becomes void. So if your ticket is replicated and the person with the copy gets to the venue before you, you won’t be able to get into the show because your barcode will already have been scanned into the system. Thus, they got into the venue for free, and you lost your money.

Ticketmaster even has an entire blog post dedicated to this. They suggest that if you are going to post pictures of your tickets, to at least cover the barcode.

Even if a person were able to somehow sneak past security without having the ticket scanned, this could lead to the venue going over capacity, which is a safety hazard. A certain number of tickets is allotted for each location for a reason.

People Can Get Access to Areas of the Venue They Aren’t Authorized to Be In

If someone replicates an industry pass, this is an even bigger issue. Concert photographers, for example, are typically given a laminate or a sticker that they can wear on their clothing or put on their gear so that security guards can distinguish them from regular concert attendees and allow them access to the photo area.

Other industry personnel, such as roadies and tour managers, are given access backstage and to other private areas of the venues. If non-working individuals successfully make counterfeits of these passes, they’ll be allowed to enter certain areas that they aren’t authorized to be in. This could be dangerous for the artists and other industry personnel.

People Can Potentially Sneak Dangerous Items Into the Venue

Perhaps the biggest risk of all the ones we’ve mentioned is that if someone replicates a working pass, they can potentially sneak dangerous items into the concert venue.

While many large venues have strict rules about bags that can be brought into an event for attendees, someone working, such as a photographer, typically needs to bring in a bag of their gear. And while many large venues are likely careful about checking equipment to make sure there are no weapons or other harmful objects inside, one user on social media claimed a person tried to smuggle a gun into a venue posing as a photographer.

“Friendly reminder that I once showed up to a gig where someone posed as a photographer and brought a gun in his camera bag. That’s why you shouldn’t do this,” someone claimed on X.

The bottom line is that we shouldn’t make it any easier for someone with ill intentions to slip past security.

READ MORE: 10 Ways Not to Be an A–hole at Concerts

As I Shoot Shows pointed out, a TikToker shared a video in 2021 bragging that he created a counterfeit version of a photo pass for a Kanye West concert, and was granted access because of it.

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