By Malene Clausen | December 5, 2022
Last Tuesday, on Nov. 22, thousands of excited fans waited in front of their computer screens as the presale tickets to Taylor Swifts’ “Eras” tour went live. Swift, who may be better known as the Queen of Pop, has not gone on tour since 2018. About two million total tickets were bought up at lighting speed, the most any artist has ever sold in one day. Still, many fans went offline empty handed and frustrated at TicketMaster, as it shut down due to the overwhelming demand.
Camilla Clausen, a student at the University of Copenhagen, recounted her experience saying, “It was pure chaos. I was waiting and waiting for hours for the tickets to go live, but it never happened. One second my screen was pending, the other second it said not available.”
The sales of pre-tickets were supposed to be available only for verified fans before re-sellers got access to them. However, this was not the case. Shortly after the pre-tickets were released, the tickets began showing up on ticket resale websites at much higher prices.
Emma Wilson, a fan, said, “I think it is so unfair that I sat and waited for hours, and didn’t get any tickets. TicketMaster was so unorganized and now seeing that resell websites have ‘Eras’ tour tickets available on their website, for way more money, so they can make a profit, just makes me sad.”
Swift broke her silence three days after the debacle, where she addressed the issue in several statements on her social media pages expressing both her happiness and disappointment.
“It is 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,” Swift said.
The popstar also mentioned that the ticket company, without specifically naming TicketMaster, told her team that they would take care of any situation. She said, “We asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.”
Instead of honoring their promise, TicketMaster chose to cancel the general sale of the tickets to the “Eras” tour. Among many other frustrated fans, Jake Richardson said “First Ticketmaster had an error on their website, because they couldn’t handle the demand and now no more tickets are available to a reasonable price, it’s a joke.”
Taylor Swift released her 10th album, “Midnights” at the end of October, her first body of new work since her last albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore” were released in 2020. Many fans have been waiting for the announcement of a new tour, though given the recent incident, this may change. There are still tickets left on resell websites, such as StubHub, but they are not cheap. Some are marked at thousands of dollars, although some are being sold at acceptable prices.