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Music

Some Fans Are Disappointed With Taylor Swift After Ticketmaster Fiasco

Ticketing for Taylor Swift's upcoming 'The Eras Tour' on Ticketmaster proved to be more of a nightmare than fans originally anticipated.

by Eryn Murphy

Published on November 17, 2022

3 min read

It has been a tough week for Taylor Swift fans. After two presales for the singer’s The Eras Tour and a canceled general sale, morale about the singer and the upcoming tour is at an all-time low. While most fingers are rightfully pointed at Ticketmaster, some fans can’t help but express disappointment at Swift herself.

Ticketing for Taylor Swift’s tour on Ticketmaster was a nightmare

On Nov. 15, a select number of fans were able to participate in the TaylorSwiftTix Presale through Ticketmaster Verified Fan to purchase tickets for The Eras Tour.

Throughout the presale, Ticketmaster crashed and paused queues, leaving some fans sitting in queues for multiple hours only for tickets to be sold out by the time it was their turn.

Because Ticketmaster was unable to meet the demand, the Capital One Exclusive Cardholder Presale was rescheduled from Nov. 15 to Nov. 16. This presale did not prove to be more fruitful for fans.

In some cases, fans’ tickets were quietly updated on Ticketmaster to show that the tickets bought had obstructed views hours to days after purchase, meaning Ticketmaster allegedly did not alert fans and charged VIP prices for tickets with obstructed views.

Tickets were supposed to go on sale for the general public on Nov. 18, but on Nov. 17, Ticketmaster canceled the sale because of “insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”

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.
— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) November 17, 2022

Ticketmaster addressed the situation

After canceling the general sale for The Eras Tour, Ticketmaster issued a now-deleted blog post addressing the stress over ticketing.

The deleted blog post revealed that 3.5 million people signed up for the TaylorSwiftTix Presale, and 1.5 million people were given presale codes. This demand along with bots and fans who did not have codes trying to buy tickets brought too much traffic to the Ticketmaster website.

However, this is not the first time Ticketmaster has caught the anger of fans during a massive ticket sale; it is just the most prominent time the company’s issues have been shown, catching the attention of multiple politicians.

“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in. Break them up,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

Taylor Swift has not spoken about the ticketing issue

While fans struggled over the past few days to secure tickets for The Eras Tour, Swift has remained silent on the issue.

She celebrated her recent Grammy Awards nominations on Instagram the same day the TaylorSwiftTix Presale was taking place.

Her team Taylor Nation has also not issued an official statement, and instead has only retweeted Ticketmaster’s statement and posted about new remixes for Swift’s single “Anti-Hero.”

As long as the Anti-Hero (@ILLENIUM Remix) is playing, we’re looking the sun and mirror right in the eye. ☀️?

Available now on https://t.co/ZSGtuHSAkb until 11:59pm ET #AntiHeroRemixes pic.twitter.com/Geb8FxgAeU
— Taylor Nation (@taylornation13) November 17, 2022

Some Swifties called out the singer

Swift’s silence surrounding Ticketmaster has led some fans to look at Swift and her team with a critical eye.

“this isn’t a new thing for Taylor, she’s been exploiting us for years and im glad a lot of people are realizing it. It doesn’t mean you need to stop being a fan, but taking this into account will change your opinion of her…,” one fan wrote on Reddit.

“I know this will be difficult to digest but big artist like Taylor don’t care about the fans. Things would be spoken about and brought up if she did. It’s all about the $$$,” a Reddit user wrote.

“I don’t think an NDA would prevent her from saying ‘Hey, I’m sorry this happened and we didn’t plan for everything to go this way.’ She doesn’t have to say anything bad about Ticketmaster or try to fix anything but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that she hasn’t even acknowledged it,” one fan wrote on Reddit.

Other fans defended Swift and directed their anger solely toward Ticketmaster.

“It is wise for her to not say anything until her legal team has explored all documents. Personally I’d rather her not risk getting blacklisted from stadiums just to give some vague comfort to fans,” a fan wrote on Reddit.

Taylor Swift should speak out about Ticketmaster sooner rather than later

Of this whole ordeal, not everything that went wrong is Swift’s fault. A majority of the blame falls on Ticketmaster, and issues that have existed with the platform for years were exacerbated to an extreme.

Given that Swift is only one person, it should also not be up to her to try and dismantle or fight against an entire company with ties to a majority of venues.

However, Swift has built her entire public persona on caring for fans while still maintaining her status as a global pop star.

While millions of fans felt exploited, Swift’s team shared information about how to buy more remixes of “Anti-Hero,” and Swift herself ignored the issue and posted about the Grammy Awards.

Other artists close to Swift’s fame level have insisted on setting reasonable ticket prices, held multiple pre-sales to limit traffic, and tried to prevent the resale of tickets to limit scalpers.

There are things Swift could have done to help alleviate the pressure, and her and her team’s silence comes across as tone-deaf given the national magnitude of the ticketing fiasco.