Update, November 18, 2022: Nearly a day after Ticketmaster canceled the general sale for her Eras tour, Taylor Swift addressed fans’ issues with Ticketmaster. “It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets,†she wrote on her Instagram Story, “but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.†“We asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could,†Swift added without mentioning Ticketmaster by name. She wrote that she is “trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward†and assured ticketless fans that there will be “more opportunities†to see her live. However, Swift did not say whether there will be a general sale for the tour or if there are remaining tickets.
Original story follows.
Taylor Swift fans are about to be in their revenge era. On November 17, Ticketmaster canceled the planned general sale for Swift’s Eras Tour. The company made the announcement on Twitter, citing “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.†The news came less than 24 hours before tickets were set to go on sale to the public (10 a.m. ET on November 18) and after days of Ticketmaster criticism — beginning with the Verified Fan presale, on November 15, that had such massive demand that it led to Ticketmaster crashing and left millions of fans empty-handed. As a result, Ticketmaster delayed part of the Verified Fan presale and the following Capital One presale, which happened yesterday. It is unclear what the next steps for the tour will be. We have reached out to Swift’s representatives for comment and Ticketmaster for clarification on future general-sale plans.
Ticketmaster has claimed that demand for Swift’s tour was record-setting: More than 3.5 million people signed up for the Verified Fan presale, 1.5 million were given presale codes, and more than 2 million tickets sold on November 15 alone. Based on the company’s estimated demand, Swift would need to perform 900 stadium shows. (She is playing 52 shows, nearly double the amount she originally announced, on her first tour since 2018.) Ticketmaster said it had 3.5 billion system requests, quadruple its previous peak, and 15 percent of users experienced issues during the presale. After the presale failures, Ticketmaster said it was focused on improving service. “The biggest venues and artists turn to us because we have the leading ticketing technology in the world — that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and clearly for Taylor’s on sale it wasn’t,†the company said.
As Swifties attacked Ticketmaster on social media over site delays, exorbitant dynamic pricing, and a lack of tickets, politicians turned their eyes to the ticketing giant and its parent company, Live Nation. Tennessee’s attorney general announced a consumer-protection and antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster and Live Nation yesterday, while Senator Amy Klobuchar sent a letter to Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino requesting information on its business operations. “You said that you were ‘confident this plan will work,’†Klobuchar wrote, citing the 2009 hearing on the merger. “It appears that your confidence was misplaced.†Others in Congress, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have called Live Nation and Ticketmaster a monopoly and criticized the merger.
Swift’s tour is just the latest to have issues with Ticketmaster. Earlier this year, Bruce Springsteen and Blink-182 fans criticized the company’s online platform and dynamic pricing.