Taylor Swift addresses ‘Eras Tour’ Ticketmaster issues. ‘It really pisses me off’
Taylor Swift is speaking out after a tumultuous few days of ticket sales for her upcoming “The Eras Tour.”
Pre-sale for the tour began Tuesday, Nov. 15, sending Swifties into chaos trying to get tickets. Despite efforts by Ticketmaster to regulate sales, the public sale, which was scheduled for Friday, was canceled.
In an Instagram story posted Friday, Swift addressed fans’ frustrations.
“It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” Swift said in the statement. “We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who cares about my fans as I do.”
“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” she said.
“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” Swift said. “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.”
“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them,” she said. “And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs.”
Record-breaking demand
Ticketmaster addressed the debacle in a Nov. 17 blog post, citing record-breaking demand as the cause for website malfunctions and long wait-times that plagued fan experiences.
“Over 3.5 million people pre-registered for Taylor’s Verified Fan, which is the largest registration in history,” the post said. “Historically, around 40% of invited fans actually show up and buy tickets, and most purchase an average of 3 tickets.”
Given this, 1.5 million fans received codes and the remaining 2 million were placed on a waiting list.
However, when pre-sale started, 3.5 billion people attempted to buy tickets, four times the previous peak, Ticketmaster said. As a result of the unprecedented demand, about 15% of interactions experienced some kind of disruption, including fans who lost their tickets due to passcode verification errors.
Swift’s first tour in years
“The Eras Tour” marks Swift’s first tour since 2018, when she toured for her “Reputation” album.
Since then, Swift has released six new albums, including two re-recordings of previous albums dubbed “Taylor’s Version.”
The pop-star was set to tour with her “Lover” album, which was released in 2019, but canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most recently, Swift released her tenth studio album, “Midnights,” in October.
Fans — and officials — react
In the wake of the pre-sale fiasco and cancellation of the public sale, fans — and officials — have expressed their concerns about the situation.
“You LITERALLY HAVE ONE PURPOSE, which is to sell tickets. And you are terrible at it. And have been for so so long,” another responded to Ticketmaster’s announcement that public sale was canceled.
Lawmakers, too, have taken notice and are calling for Ticketmaster to be broken up.
“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, (its) merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in. Break them up,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted.
“(Ticketmaster’s) excessive wait times and fees are completely unacceptable, as seen with today’s (Taylor Swift) tickets, and are a symptom of a larger problem. It’s no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) tweeted.
The Justice Department opened an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster’s parent company, LiveNation, following the ticket mess, The New York Times reported Friday.
This story was originally published November 18, 2022 at 10:42 AM with the headline "Taylor Swift addresses ‘Eras Tour’ Ticketmaster issues. ‘It really pisses me off’."
