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Ticketmaster regrets Taylor Swift’s “excruciating” experience of watching her fans go through the equivalent of “several bear attacks” to get tickets for her next tour. The company apologized in a statement issued Friday night after Swift blamed them for the ticketing system’s failure.
Ticketmaster said it strives “to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets for Taylor Swift ‘The Eras’ Tour.”
We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets. We feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened: https://t.co/1Gn4kRIvq8
“First,” the statement continued, “we want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets.” Then it continued on to explain in detail why its system failed and so many encountered problems making a purchase.
In the past, Ticketmaster said it has been able to manage a massive onslaught of customers. “However,” the statement read, “this time the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak.”
As a result, the company elected to slow down a certain number of sales and “push back” others to give its systems time to stabilize and handle the load. “The trade off,” according to Ticketmaster, “was longer wait times in queue for some fans.”
The statement closed on a positive note, however, reporting that more than “2 million tickets were sold on Ticketmaster for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour on Nov. 15 – the most tickets ever sold for an artist in a single day.”
The apology comes after the New York Times reported that the Dept. of Justice is investigating Ticketmaster owner Live Nation Entertainment for possibly abusing “its power over the multibillion-dollar live music industry.”
Taylor Swift is speaking out amid the controversy surrounding Ticketmaster’s handling of her upcoming “Eras” tour. The singer commented on the issue on her Instagram story on Friday, saying that Ticketmaster had assured her team “multiple times” they “could handle this kind of demand.”
Taylor Swift addressed the recent controversy surrounding Ticketmaster’s handling of tickets for her upcoming Eras tour.
Instagram
“It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” she said. “… 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.”
On Thursday, Ticketmaster canceled its general sale of the tour tickets that was supposed to debut on Friday after hours of complaints about pre-sale site complications and glitches. The company said the cancelation was triggered by unprecedented demand, with more than 3.5 million people pre-registered to get an access code for purchasing tickets.
The company did not say whether more tickets would be sold for the tour at a later date. The tour, which will be a “journey through the musical eras” of Swift’s career, is set to kick off next March in Arizona.
“I never could have imagined how insane this whole process has been,” one of Swift’s fans, Amber Garis, told CBS Mornings. “It obviously wasn’t meant to be if we didn’t get tickets but we’re upset.”
Swift said Friday that the controversy occurred because of a “multitude of reasons,” and suggested that the blame for the situation falls on Ticketmaster. She said she’s “trying to figure out how the situation can be improved moving forward.”
“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,” she said. “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.”
Swift said she hopes that she can provide more opportunities in the future for all of her fans who weren’t able to get tickets to the tour.
“Thank you for wanting to be there,” she said. “You have no idea how much that means.”
If trying to buy tickets to Taylor Swift‘s upcoming tour felt like “going through several bear attacks,” the Blank Space singer agrees with you.
In a statement posted to Swift’s Instagram account on Friday, the singer criticized Ticketmaster‘s messy handling of ticket sales for her upcoming The Eras Tour.
On Thursday, Ticketmaster cancelled the general public sale after hellish presales left fans experiencing technical difficulties on the company’s website and waiting several hours in queues, only to be unable to make a purchase.
In her statement, Swift, 32, wrote that she asked Ticketmaster “multiple times if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.”
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She claimed it was “excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”
Taylor Swift posted a statement to her Instagram account about Ticketmaster’s sale cancellation on Nov. 17, 2022.
Instagram / @taylorswift
The singer said she has always been “extremely protective” of her fans. She claimed to have brought several elements of her career to her own in-house team over the last few years “SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team.”
Swift and her teams are currently working “to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” she wrote.
She also echoed earlier data provided by Ticketmaster that said more than 2.4 million tickets had already been sold for The Eras Tour. She said those who did obtain tickets must have felt like they “went through several bear attacks to get them.”
These tickets were sold as a part of presales on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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Fall fairytale fashion trends inspired by Taylor Swift
In her statement’s conclusion, Swift addressed the thousands (if not millions) of disappointed fans who did not score tickets. It did not offer an alternative method of acquiring tickets, or really any other option other than accepting that you won’t be seeing her on tour.
“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. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means,” she wrote.
On Thursday, Ticketmaster broke the hearts of Swifties everywhere when the company tweeted out the news of the general sale’s cancellation.
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“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,” the company wrote.
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.
It remains unclear if the public sale will be rescheduled at some point or if it’s cancelled entirely.
During Tuesday’s “Verified Fan” presale (an attempt by Ticketmaster to limit the number of scalpers and bots buying tickets to popular shows), fans experienced confusing technical outages and queue wait times of up to eight hours.
A Ticketmaster spokesperson told Variety the site’s technical issues were a result of a “staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site.” The company said this led to “3.5 billion total system requests — 4x our previous peak.”
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By Wednesday, tickets had been pushed onto resale websites like StubHub for tens of thousands of dollars. Reuters reported some early ticketholders were trying to sell their seats for as much as US$28,000 ($37,430).
Originally priced tickets ranged from US$49 ($65) to $449 ($600) each.
The upcoming tour will see Swift, 32, perform 52 shows across the U.S. There are no Canadian dates on Swift’s upcoming tour, but many fans north of the border had planned on heading south to catch a show — but maybe not at these prices.
Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010, resulting in control of more than 70 per cent of the primary ticketing and live event venues market.
Swift released her latest album, Midnights, in October. The U.S. tour is scheduled to start in March 2023 and end in August.
Within mere hours of posting this article, two major things have happened: Taylor Swift publicly condemned Ticketmaster, who apparently promised they were equipped to handle such demand, and the Department of Justice has agreed to launch investigation into the monopolistic website.
The downfall of Twitter and Elon…the downfall of Ticketmaster….who’s next?
When Taylor Swift announced The Eras Tour, millions of fans flocked to Ticketmaster to sign up for a chance to win the Verified Fan presale code…myself included. I waited in a three-hour line just to enter my information and cross my fingers that a website randomly selects my name for a code to buy tickets.
I was less surprised when I didn’t receive a Verified Fan code…but no matter! In my clutches was a Capital One credit card, which guaranteed me a chance at tickets to see Taylor. I was super encouraged. Until I waited another three hours in a queue only to be informed tickets were sold out.
For a while, I’ve been an active advocate for abolishing Ticketmaster’s monopoly on the live entertainment ticket market. I’m used to waiting in an hour-long queue to fight for the chance at one face-value ticket for Harry Styles. If you don’t nab a face-value ticket, then you’re looking at paying $1,000 per. Seat. Thanks to money-grubbing resellers.
Things went from bad to worse when a reported 14 million people flooded Ticketmaster to purchase Taylor Swift tickets. Since Ticketmaster’s merger with Live Nation in 2010, the website has complete control over tickets…making it virtually impossible to access a face-value ticket.
Not only was the The Eras Tour presale such a cataclysmic debacle that Capital One postponed their presale for 24-hours…the general sale has been canceled because Ticketmaster sold 2 million tickets during the presale. Swift’s previous Reputation Stadium Tour sold 2.8 million tickets in total.
Ticketmaster has drawn national attention due to this blatant robbery. Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling for the Department of Justice to look into this un-checked monopoly. For now, I will stream Midnights and pretend I’m in a stadium with Taylor.
After days of complaints about complications and system glitches, Ticketmaster announced Thursday that the public sale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Eras tour has been canceled. They were set to go on sale Friday. Vladimir Duthiers reports.
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UPDATE: The general public sale of Taylor Swift tickets set to take place Friday was cancelled by Ticketmaster on Thursday afternoon.
“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,” the company posted to Twitter.
It remains unclear if the public sale will be rescheduled at some point or if it’s cancelled entirely.
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.
During a pre-sale on Tuesday, Swift fans were met with overwhelming wait times and technical issues on Ticketmaster’s website when they attempted to make a purchase. Though the company said it tried to work quickly to address any problems as a result of the overwhelming ticket demand, some eager Swifties waited up to eight hours to try and purchase tickets through Ticketmaster on Tuesday.
On Thursday, a Ticketmaster spokesperson told Variety the site’s technical issues were a result of a “staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site.” The company claimed this led to “3.5 billion total system requests — 4x our previous peak.”
ORIGINAL STORY: With ticket prices this high, some Taylor Swift fans will only be seeing the artist in their Wildest Dreams.
On Tuesday, hopeful American fans rushed to Live Nation’s Ticketmaster website to try and score pre-sale tickets to Swift’s The Eras Tour, but technical outages, long wait times and limited availability left many panicked and disappointed.
By Wednesday, tickets had been pushed onto resale websites like StubHub for tens of thousands of dollars. Reuters reported some early ticketholders were trying to sell their seats for as much as US$28,000 ($37,430).
Originally priced tickets ranged from US$49 ($65) to $449 ($600) each.
The upcoming tour will see Swift, 32, perform 52 shows across the U.S. There are no Canadian dates on Swift’s upcoming tour, but many fans north of the border had planned on heading south to catch a show — but maybe not at these prices.
Tuesday’s “Verified Fan” presale (a system used by many popular artists) provides special digital codes to certain fans to buy tickets before a general, public sale. It is intended to deter scalpers and bots from purchasing tickets, though the success of Verified Fan pre-sales is unclear.
Ticketmaster released a statement that claimed Tuesday’s presale resulted in “historically unprecedented demand.” It said millions of people joined the queue to try and purchase tickets.
A new round of Swift ticket presales, for Capital One credit card holders, proceeded on Wednesday with fewer complaints on social media. Some fans said wait times stretched past three hours in online queues, and many left empty-handed when ticket allotments sold out.
Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010, resulting in control of more than 70 per cent of the primary ticketing and live event venues market.
Fall fairytale fashion trends inspired by Taylor Swift
On Wednesday, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said he would investigate customer complaints about Ticketmaster.
Though Ticketmaster has not been accused of misconduct, Skrmetti said at a press conference that a lack of competition could be leading to higher ticket prices and poor customer service, Bloomberg reported.
Democratic New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also criticized the 2010 Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger. On Twitter, she claimed Ticketmaster “is a monopoly.” She said the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger “should never have been approved.”
Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal also tweeted about the Swift ticket snafu, writing that it “is a perfect example of how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger harms consumers by creating a near-monopoly.”
Taylor Swift’s tour sale is a perfect example of how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger harms consumers by creating a near-monopoly. I’ve long urged DOJ to investigate the state of competition in the ticketing industry. Consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior.
Across social media, Swift’s fans have loudly chided Ticketmaster and the resale market, claiming greedy companies and opportunistic scalpers are taking advantage of the artist’s dedicated fanbase.
I dont know if you are aware, but a lot of loyal fans got screwed over trying to buy tickets yesterday. So many fans didn’t have the chance to buy even one ticket after waiting in line for literal hours. Yet, so many scalpers are reselling now for thousands of $ @taylorswift13
me trying to figure out how ticketmaster wasn’t prepared for the demand for Taylor Swift tickets when they sent out the codes themselves to control a certain amount of people entering the presale #TheErasTourpic.twitter.com/gx3fI2aNwj
Swifties impatiently waiting to get their hands on tickets to Taylor Swift’s upcoming Eras tour may have to wait a little longer. Although presale tickets to certain shows were available as planned Tuesday, Ticketmaster was forced to delay several phases of its presale rollout due to a “historically unprecedented demand” for tickets.
Ticketmaster announced that the Capitol One presale is being rescheduled from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday, and ticket sales to West Coast shows, which were due to start at 10 a.m. local time, were delayed several hours as millions headed to the website to try to secure tickets, the seller said.
In order to access the presale tickets, people had to register with Ticketmaster last week. But the process was selective — not all fans who signed up got access to the presale. Those who were selected received a code Monday night, which they had to enter to access the presale that started at 10 a.m. local time Tuesday.
However, as fans on the East Coast with presale access began logging on to Ticketmaster Tuesday morning, many reported that they were stuck in a 2,000+ person queue, or that the site was experiencing outages.
“We are aware fans may be experiencing intermittent issues with the site and are urgently working to solve them,” Ticketmaster’s fan support account tweeted.
The issues forced Ticketmaster to push the West Coast’s presale back from 10 a.m. local time to 3 p.m. It also moved the Capital One presale to Wednesday.
We are aware fans may be experiencing intermittent issues with the site and are urgently working to resolve.
The last time Swift went on tour was in 2018 to promote her sixth album, “Reputation.” She had planned to go on tour for her seventh studio album, “Lover,” but later canceled it due to the COVID-19 pandemic — meaning this is her first tour in five years.
