I think it’s safe to say Swifties have “Bad Blood” with Ticketmaster after the disastrous presale, and I don’t think Taylor Swift’s devoted fans will likely “Shake It Off” anytime soon. Over the course of the last three days, Ticketmaster had so many problems, and they couldn’t solve them. Now with the cancellation of the public sale, fans are sharing their frustrations with the site's failure to give buyers a smooth experience.
It was fairly obvious there was going to be high demand for this tour, just the announcement alone caused a loud response, and even wreaked havoc on many brides’ plans. All this is likely due to the fact that Swift’s latest album Midnights broke records within its first week, her upcoming projects are highly anticipated, and she hasn’t been on a tour since Reputation came out in 2017. Since then she has released four new albums and re-released two.
All this is to say, a tour coming years after her last one that alludes to covering all of Taylor Swift’s eras and every one of her “dorky” song categories, should have warranted a historically high-demand sale, and Ticketmaster should have seen it coming. However, everything that could go wrong, seemed to go wrong.
To top off two days of unexpected announcements about this sale, Ticketmaster tweeted the announcement that the general sale, which was scheduled for November 18, had been canceled. In a matter of a couple of hours, the tweet received over 46 thousand quote tweets, and over 12 thousand comments from fans who couldn’t secure tickets. The tweet said:
Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.November 17, 2022
One Swiftie, whose current screen name is “catie did not get taylor tickets,” commented about this presale problem. She noted that those with boosts or were promised early access because they bought tickets to Swift’s last tour Loverfest (which was canceled) didn’t get any of the promised benefits during the sale.
would you guys care to comment on how hundreds of fans with presale AND boosts were unable to get tickets, but hundreds of scalpers were able to get multiple tickets through VERIFIED FAN presale and are now reselling them for THOUSANDS of dollars?
Other fans who were livid about the poorly executed sale tweeted about possible ways for Ticketmaster to fix the problems, like this fan who wrote:
Ticketmaster 👏 should 👏 have 👏 required 👏 you 👏 to 👏 enter 👏 the 👏 presale 👏 code 👏 before 👏 joining 👏 the 👏 queue 👏November 17, 2022
According to a source who spoke to Variety, there’s speculation that the tickets that were set for the general sale may be offered to those who experienced delays earlier this week. However, that’s not confirmed. Conformation about if the general sale will get rescheduled is also unknown.
While the general sale was canceled and fans are extremely flustered, Ticketmaster did release a lengthy explanation as to what happened during the presales. Over 3.5 million people registered for the Verified Fan presale, and 1.5 million were selected to participate in it. The company stated that on the day of the presale there were 3.5 billion system requests which came from bot attacks and fans without a presale code, which is what caused the long wait times and chaotic buying process.
At the end of the presale, 2 million tickets were sold, which is the most tickets ever sold in a single day on the platform. However, on social media, there are tons of fans who were left empty-handed and are ready to throw hands. All is clearly not well for Swifties, and I have a feeling they will be fighting Ticketmaster over this chaotic sale with the same passion and detail-oriented tendencies they have when finding Easter eggs in one of Swift’s videos.
