Taylor Swift’s Ticketmaster Fiasco
On Tuesday, November 15th, Taylor Swift fans across the country woke up with the expectation of buying tickets to her “Eras Tour.” However, this expectation was quickly destroyed by the ticket buying/selling site, Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster is the most popular ticket distribution service in the world, but that doesn’t mean they have an efficient site. According to More Perfect Union, Ticketmaster fees can cost anything up to seventy-eight percent of the ticket’s price. Consumers aren’t even sure where this money goes, because the site still isn’t prepared for significant sales and presales. Ticketmaster sent Verified Fan codes to 3.5 million people across the United States, but the site crashed when all those people joined the queue. Because of the 14 million people on Ticketmaster, the queues were paused for any amount of time between 1-4 hours.
“[My] step-mom waited in the queue, and once she got through to look at the prices of the tickets, they were quite pricey,” Lequire said.
In addition to Taylor Swift fan accounts tweeting their frustrations, celebrities also shared their struggles getting tickets. Sarah Michelle Gellar shared on Instagram, “Just a girl…. On hold with @ticketmaster … trying to get @taylorswift tickets.” Some celebrities weren’t waiting in line but instead shared their own frustrations with their Ticketmaster/Live Nation sponsored events. Country music artist Zach Bryan jokingly shared that his next album name would be “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster,” and even made a fake cover.
Ticketmaster sold every ticket they had across every venue during the verified fan and Capital One presales, meaning they had to cancel the general sale for fans who were not sent a code.
“[I was] going to wait until the general sale but they canceled it,” Lequire said.
Taylor Swift shared on her social media platforms, “…we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.” She ended her statement by saying that she hopes to provide more opportunities to sing along with her in the future.
