Taylor Swift’s Ticketmaster Troubles
Have you ever waited over two hours in line to never get any tickets? Read about why fans are angry at Ticketmaster for handling Taylor Swift tickets.
Super-intense fans waiting for hours in the queue, thousands of technical difficulties, tempers and frustration going through the roof–snapshot of how presale went for Taylor Swift tickets.
Fans knew that getting tickets to Taylor Swift’s upcoming Eras Tour would be a challenge. No one was ready for how challenging it would actually be. Ticketmaster, who was Taylor Swifts ticket selling platform, was not prepared to support millions of fans on their website and it ended up being an epic failure on their part.
Taylor Swift announced her tour dates on the first of November and announced even more tour dates later that same week. Fans were very excited about the concert and were already signing up for Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program, which allowed fans to register in advance and gain access to presale tickets. The presale tickets enabled certain fans to get a code which gave them access to tickets before general sales opened. More than 3.5 million people verified for the program in preparation for the tour. About 1.5 million people were given a code to access them to presale. According to Ticketmaster, many fans without invite codes joined the site on November 5th , which caused the website to crash many times. There were complaints by fans of hours of waiting and technical glitches, causing many fans who actually had the presale to not get tickets.
Ticketmaster announced the general sale of tickets wouldn’t be opening at all due to high demands on their systems. There is no word about if tickets will open up to the public, but many fans who did get tickets are selling the tickets on resale websites. Tickets are selling online for up to $20,000. Taylor Swift fan Barret Klear was able to get six tickets using his presale code and has resold four of his tickets for $900 each, when they were originally only $350.
Swift addressed the issue of obtaining tickets on her Instagram story. She wrote a long apology statement about how she did not expect such a struggle, and that she had been reassured by Ticketmaster that they could handle the insane amount of people on their site. Ticketmaster was unfortunately not as well prepared as they had thought.
Many fans are blaming Ticketmaster for the fiasco that has happened with ticket purchasing. Ticketmaster has become a well-known platform for selling tickets ever since they merged with LiveNation. Fans have complained about the two merging and are now being even louder about their frustrations. They have said that prices of tickets and the platform’s service fees can almost be around the same price.
Ticketmaster won’t be getting away with this as easily as they might hope. Along with backlash from Taylor Swift fans, many political leaders including Tennessee Attorney General Johnathan Skrmetti, have claimed that they are going to take action against Ticketmaster. There have already been legal allegations against Ticketmaster, so now they are going to look into them further.
Taylor Swift has been connecting with her fans through social media and repeatedly apologizing to them on her Instagram stories. Taylor has even said, “… all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us all to get together and sing these songs.” Hope for getting tickets at a reasonable price isn’t over yet and may be possible for many fans, as long as Ticketmaster isn’t involved.
