The trophy of the 2020 League of Legends World Championship (S10) is placed at Zhapu Road Bridge near the Bund in Shanghai on October 12, 2020. Photo: CFP

Tickets being sold by scalpers for the 2020 League of Legends World Championship (S10) final are fake, warned Shanghai police on Saturday, adding that an investigation has been launched into any scalping behavior in relation to the e-sports event.

Police from Pudong New Area reminded fans and game players on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo on Saturday that the S10 final organized by Riot Games will not provide paper tickets, and that ID cards will be the only certificate for admission and must belong to the person carrying it. 

The S10 final will be held at Pudong Soccer Stadium on October 31. As one of the largest-scale and most influential e-sports events, the final has attracted large numbers of fans and players. 

In order to meet the requirements of epidemic prevention management and prevent ticket scalping, the event organizer has given away all 6,312 tickets free of charge through a lucky draw. 

The organizer will also strictly manage offline viewing rights through a series of measures including real-name registration, lottery with notarization, qualification confirmation and real-name admission through face verification. 

Over 3.2 million game players registered to compete for the seats at the lottery held on October 15. The lottery results came out on October 16 and winners received notifications via text messages.

Scalpers saw a "business opportunity" due to the extremely low probability of winning the tickets. So-called "scalper tickets" of the final have been circulating on the internet, with some priced at 30,000 yuan ($4,462) per ticket. 

Before the lottery, some scalpers provided services claiming to enable entrants to win the lucky draw, offering different success rates at different prices, as long as the clients provided their phone number, name, ID number, and user account and password for League of Legends. 

The scalpers promised that a 7,500-yuan service fee would guarantee them a ticket, while paying 500 yuan would bring a 30 percent chance of success. The clients would not be refunded if the scalpers failed to win the tickets. 

The Pudong police have launched an investigation into the online scalping actions and will strengthen security patrols outside the venue to crack down on disruptive behavior by scalpers on the day of the final, The Paper reported on Saturday. 

Cheng Jun, a policeman from the Pudong branch of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, told the Xinmin Evening News that the so-called scalpers are all liars and the so-called "scalper tickets" are all fake. All 6,312 audience seats were generated through a lottery and the seats are linked to ID numbers which cannot be transferred to other people. 

The organizer will strictly implement the real-name admission mechanism with face-identification verification to completely eliminate scalping, and audience members risk having their personal information leaked if they provide their ID numbers to outside parties, Xinmin Evening News reported. 

Reading the news about the overpriced "scalper tickets," many web users said they could not believe there were people willing to spend 30,000 yuan to watch the match. "Don't believe scalpers," a web user said. "Isn't it more worth it to spend the money on meat?" another commented.