Voice of London

‘Historic demand’ for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour has crashed Ticketmaster and the hopes of many fans, too.

This is the tweet that was equivalent to a cold shower for many Taylor Swift fans in the United States yesterday evening. 

After a disastrous pre-sale with nine hour long virtual queues earlier in the week, Ticketmaster announced on Thursday that the general sale for Taylor Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour’ is cancelled due to insufficient ticket inventory and historic demand – two million tickets sold in a single day.

The ‘All Too Well’ singer announced her first tour in five years on November 1 on the screen of Good Morning America, confirming US dates only for the moment, with ‘international dates announced as soon as we can’. She described the tour as ‘a journey through my musical eras through my career, past and present’.

Using Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan scheme, designed to deter scalpers and bots, Taylor Swift fans ‘Swifties’ were able to sign up for a special code, which would give them priority access to the pre-sale for her 52 shows if selected. Many fans, however, were still left empty handed, as the site crashed and some codes appeared to be ‘invalid’ due to a system bug.

Some tickets are already being listed on reseller websites such as StubHub for as much as US$22,700 (£19,100).

Based on the company’s announcement on Twitter, some tickets still remain unsold, but how they will be made available is still a question.

Due to long virtual queues nationwide, some tickets were gone completely by the time some got to their turn, or even in the ten seconds it takes for the page to take you to checkout. Many Swifties took to social media to express their frustration.

Ticketmaster still managed to uphold the exclusive Capital One cardholder presale (as Capital One is the official sponsor of the tour in the US), but their ticket inventory was diminished after it.

There are now multiple lawmakers from Congress who have voiced their insatisfaction with Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment Inc., like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, representative for New York’s 14th congressional district.

Meanwhile, the Attorney Generals of Tennessee and North Carolina said that both are looking into customer complaints about the presale and if the company violated antitrust laws.

Swift has not yet addressed the issues of the chaotic presale. Many fans are angry because she chose not to opt out of ‘dynamic pricing’, a feature that raises prices for tickets higher as demand grows.

International dates are yet to be announced. However, it is reasonable to expect that demand will be similar in size in Europe as it was in the United States. 

Ticketmaster’s UK counterpart has had its own issues in the past: Bruce Springsteen tickets were badly overpriced back in July, and the site experienced issues too. European Swifties should brace themselves.

This isn’t the first time Ticketmaster has been flooded with complaints about its practices. Back in 2010, Wired magazine wrote “Everyone hates Ticketmaster – but no one can take it down”, and they have been on the radar of various lawmakers in past years.

Swift released her tenth studio album, Midnights, on October 21, and has promised bops from all the albums across her career on her Eras tour, scheduled to start in the U.S. in March.

Words: Istvan Botond Beres|Subbing: Lumi Leinonen