Country star Eric Church has dealt scalpers in Minnesota a blow after cancelling almost 1,000 tickets for an upcoming show.

When prime seats for his 16 September (14) Target Center gig in Minneapolis sold out this week (beg21Apr14), fans started to complain that they never even got a chance to buy them, prompting Church to determine that ruthless scalpers had snapped up the best tickets with a view to selling them at high prices closer to the show.

The Springsteen hitmaker has since pulled 902 of the tickets sold after they were identified as being purchased by scalpers.

The tickets were put back on sale on Friday (25Apr14).

Announcing his bid to thwart the scalpers, Church says, "A lot of acts just want to sell as many tickets as they can, and they don't care who they sell them to. I want my fans to be the ones who buy tickets to my shows, and I want scalpers to back off. I can't stop ticket scalpers completely, but I can definitely make it harder for them."