On Tuesday, November 15, the Verified Fan Presale took place on Ticketmaster for popstar Taylor Swift’s upcoming Eras tour. Millions of fans, also known as Swifties, sat in front of their computers prepared for the fight of their lives to get tickets to Swift’s tour. What was not anticipated, though, would be how much of a disaster the presale would become in a matter of minutes.
Just after 10 a.m., when the presale went live, problems arose for fans who were trying to buy tickets to see their favorite artists, and multiple issues occurred.
Immediately things went south. The amount of traffic on the site from Swift’s tickets caused the site to crash, and this led to its own set of issues. People were unable to load the presale in general because of the volume of people. Throughout the multiple-hour wait, people would receive random errors that kicked them out of the queue altogether with no reasoning whatsoever.
There were instances where people got all the way to the checkout of the queue and got kicked out, causing anger to simmer among fans. Student Giovanna Scuderi said, “I feel like Ticketmaster could have monitored the traffic a little better. They should have known how large of a demand this ticket sale was going to be and should have been more prepared.”
People who attained presale codes and finally got to the front of the eternally long queue were being told by the website that their codes were invalid. Due to the presale codes error, the queue laid dormant for hours with no updates from the ticket site.
People who spent extra money were also supposed to have an added boost in the presale line. Fans who bought the merchandise Swift released with her album were to receive “boosts” in the queue line. Some fans who had the boosts didn’t get the chance to buy any tickets before their stadium sold out. That was opposed to their counterparts who didn’t receive any sort of boost or jump in the line and still got tickets and a better spot in the queue. This proved the supposed boosts to be ineffective and was a particular hotspot for fans who bought multiple merchandise items for the useless boost.
With the sale finally ending and the backlash against Ticketmaster beginning, the company still decided to go forward with the Capital One sale the following day. Capital One is the company sponsoring Swift’s tour, and fans with Capital One credit or debit cards were given access to a select amount of tickets for their shows as long as they paid with a Capital One card.
This sale occurred at 2 p.m. the next day on Ticketmaster, and all fans had to do to access tickets was put in the first six digits of their Capital One card. But this proved also to be a disaster. All the same issues that occurred with the presale the day prior occurred again, but this time Ticketmaster didn’t notify fans when tickets for the sale sold out. This caused fans to wait in line for hours longer to finally get to the front and find an absence of tickets.
In the aftermath of November 15th, and 16th fans of Swift were completely outraged at the ticketing company. People started complaining about the ticketing company’s outrageous service fees and how they took advantage of their exclusivity for Taylor tickets.
Fans weren’t only mad at Ticketmaster though; some were mad at Swift herself. It took days before Swift even acknowledged the disaster. “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. 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,” Swift said via her Instagram stories.
Some people like Scuderi say that Swift is not to blame in this. “I do not think this is Taylor Swift’s fault. It is hard to point fingers here. I don’t think anyone saw this coming, so it was truly hard to prepare for such a sale.” Scuderi says.
Other fans feel frustration at the fact it not only took her days to come forward about Ticketmaster, but she didn’t address the scalpers at all. Neumann sophomore Emma Schneider says Taylor had her part in the whole situation and should own up to it. “I do think this is partially her own fault. Swift is obviously aware of her cult-like following. The reason why her fandom is so distinct is because of how massive and committed they are. If she truly wanted to allow her fans to purchase tickets at a reasonable price, she should have worked with Ticketmaster before the presale. There are precedents set by other bands who made restrictions on resale price to eliminate scalpers. At the very least she could have helped prevent a bit of the chaos.”
Schneider continued to say she finds Swift’s apologies somewhat insincere “I found them slightly ingenuine because they really danced around the issue. Her claim never really took any responsibility for the matter at hand and dismissed fans who were unable to get tickets,” she says.
Swift will be playing May 12th, 13th, and 14th at the Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. Scalpers currently are reselling floor seats as high as $4,365 per ticket, and nosebleeds as high as $1,103 per ticket, and that is excluding fees that come with it.
Currently the general sale for the Eras Tour has been cancelled due to lack of available tickets, and there have been multiple investigations open on the ticket supplier.
Marcella Maughan
