There is some seriously bad blood mood from the Taylor Swift ticket debacle.
The “Anti-Hero” singer broke all kinds of records with the release of herlatest album, midnight. So you can imagine that ticket sales for her Eras_tour , her first since 2018 ,_ would be big. We just didn’t predict itwould go so awry.
So what happened? The pop superstar partnered with Ticketmaster’s Verified Fanprogram, which allowed her superfans — aka the Swifties — to pre-registerearlier in the month to receive a special code that allowed for early ticketsales on Nov. 15 — three days before they go on sale to the general public.The verification process also aims to identify real humans versus bots to weedout bulk buying and reselling.
However, there was a glitch — or, for the most die-hard — a catastrophe. Fanslogged in on Tuesday and were hit with error messages or trapped in the queuefor two hours. Other fans who planned to get tickets were sent to a wait list.The sale of West Coast tickets was also delayed for three hours to easetraffic to the site. Angry fans captured screenshots of the glitches andposted them to social media slamming Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster was trending,with even US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighing in.
The ticket company, owned by Live Nation, posted that there was a“historically unprecedenteddemand”with millions showing up to buy tickets. The business later posted an entireexplainer unpacking what went wrong. It was known the sale was going to be abig deal after 3.5 million people pre-registered, the largest Verified Fanregistration in history. That led to Swift’s tour team, managed by AEG and TheMessina Touring Group, to add more shows, doubling the dates and the tickets.Approximately 1.5 million people were invited to participate in the presalewith the other 2 million on a waiting list. Those numbers were decided becauseTicketmaster historically sees 40% of invited fans, with the specials codes,actually showing up and buying tickets, and most purchase 3 tickets onaverage.
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When the pre-sale tickets became available on Tuesday, those with the codeswent to the site and so did fans who didn’t have a code. On top of that, therewas a “staggering number of bot attacks,” with those factors resulting inunprecedented traffic to the site, according to Ticketmaster. There were 3.5billion — yes, billion! — system requests, which was four times more than thecompany ever experienced. In total, 2 million tickets were sold that day — themost tickets ever sold for an artist in a single day. The company claims thatevery ticket was sold to a buyer with the special code.
Taylor Swift Eras tour dates. (Photo: Taylor Swift via Twitter)
Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino addressed the chaos on Thursday. “We invited amillion and a half [people] on that day to come and buy those tickets, butit’s kind of like having a party. Everybody crashed that door at the same timewith 3.5 billion requests,” he said, according to the Hollywood Reporter .“We sold 2 million tickets, the most we’ve ever sold in one day in history,and another million tickets of other artists on the same day. So although weregret it was a slowdown in some queues and some error codes for a shortperiod for some fans, we did manage to recover.”
Rapino added, “There’s no nice way to tell 10 million Swifties, ‘There’s notickets.’ So they do what they do and they go to social and we deal with thatevery day.”
Also on Thursday, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced aninvestigation into Ticketmaster and Live Nation over the disastrous presaleevent. Skrmetti said his office saw a “number of complaints,” prompting anexamination into the situation, including possible antitrust violations. AOC’stweet claimed the real problem with the sale gone awry was Ticketmaster’smonopolization of the live music industry.
Tickets, which cost fans between $49 and $449 for standard and $199 to $899for VIP, during the pre-sale, are now being resold on sites like StubHub foras much as $28,000. And it’s left a bad taste for Swift fans. Since all thisplayed out, some have expressed disappointment inSwift about theprocess and prices, leading to fighting with fans who are defendher.
Taylor Swift accepts an award onstage during the MTV Europe Music Awards 2022held at PSD Bank Dome on November 13, 2022 in Duesseldorf, Germany. (Photo:Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
So what has Swift said about this? Actually nothing yet. No comments on socialmedia. We’ve reached out to her publicist and will update this story if wehear back.
The Eras tour kicks off March 17 in Glendale, Ariz., as of now, and runsthrough early August, when there are a block of shows in LA Some of thesupporting acts are Haim, Paramore and Phoebe Bridgers. International datesare pending.
Swift said the shows will be “a journey through the musical eras of my career(past and present!).”
This week, after cleaning up at the MTV Europe Music Awards and slaying thered carpet, Swift earned four new Grammy nominations, bringing her total to46. The 11-time Grammy winner’s new album just missed the cut-off forconsideration, so expect here to get even more next year. The 2023 Grammyswill air Feb. 5.