Outrage Over Taylor Swift “Eras” Tour Ticket Disaster
On November 1, 2022, Taylor Swift announced to Good Morning America that she was going on tour for the first time in over four years. Fans were ecstatic about the opportunity to finally meet the superstar singer and couldn’t wait to purchase tickets to the event. Less than three weeks later, excitement turned into outrage as the ticket-buying experience began on Ticketmaster. Taylor Swift herself released an apology letter to her Instagram following. The ticket fiasco led both Swifities and non-Swifties alike to question the existence of monopolies today, considering whether Ticketmaster violates antitrust laws.
To go back in time, after Ticketmaster released the dates of the “Eras” tour, they announced that they would be offering tickets for presale and early ticket access to Capital One cardholders. The presale would take place November 15, three days before tickets were sold to the general public. To apply for presale tickets, fans registered for a presale code using their Ticketmaster account. The night before presale tickets were sold, 1.5 out of the 3.5 million fans that applied received a unique access code they could use to buy tickets.
Although this process sounds non-unique to what usually happens when people try to buy tickets, Ticketmaster was unprepared for the storm of Swifties coming their way. The day presale tickets were released, 14 million people tried purchasing tickets, causing the website to crash and malfunction as fans frantically added seats to their cart. There were many problems, from presale codes not working, to fans being kicked out of the queue after waiting hours in line, to the “error” message the lucky few who bypassed the queue faced when trying to purchase their tickets. Those who were able to snag tickets compared the experience to surviving “The Great War,” a reference to one of Swift’s songs from her new album, Midnights.
The millions of fans who were unable to get tickets during presale expressed their fury towards Ticketmaster by ranting on social media platforms, gaining traction on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. One fan wrote on Twitter, "Ticketmaster is like, 'We're sorry about all the technical problems, this demand was unexpected,' as if Taylor Swift isn't one of the biggest artists in the galaxy." Another fan tweeted, “‘historic demand’ ‘unprecedented demand’ ticketmaster YOU decided how many people got presale codes???? if you can’t handle this then you should’ve given out less codes so at least the people that got them can wait in [the] queue without the website crashing.”
The day after presale, fans who had Capital One cards (and thus had an additional day to buy presale tickets) experienced the same issues with Ticketmaster as the presale buyers. While many fans were crushed by the disastrous presale day, many found hope in that they could buy tickets when they were released to general sale. But then, Ticketmaster dropped a bomb on the Swifties with the Twitter statement of, “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 canceled.”
After Ticketmaster released this statement, fans were beyond frustrated and disappointed. Not only were the fans upset, Taylor Swift was too. On her Instagram story, she posted a three paragraph response to her fans, expressing her disappointment in the ticket-selling platform.
“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,” said Swift. Swift also stated that, “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.”
After general sale was also canceled, the only way to get tickets was from third party sellers that sold tickets for prices as high as $90,000. Although the Swifties’ love for Taylor Swift runs deep, the majority of people don’t have the luxury of paying their year’s income for a 3-4 hour show. So instead of sulking about not getting tickets, some fans decided to show Ticketmaster that there is nothing Swifties do “Better than Revenge.”
National Public Radio reported that “More than two dozen disappointed Swifties filed a class-action lawsuit accusing Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, of fraud, misrepresentation and antitrust violations over its botched Eras Tour ticket sale.” Fans seek $2,500 for every violation of California's Unfair Competition Law, which prohibits false advertising and illegal business practices.
It is clear that after the “Eras'' tour ticket catastrophe, most Taylor Swift fans won’t ever want to deal with Ticketmaster again. While the 2.4 million people who got tickets are happy, the 11.6 million people who couldn’t get tickets will forever live in sorrow of missing an event to meet their favorite singer due to Ticketmaster’s miscalculations.
BY LILLIAN YANG