Taylor Swift Responds to Ticketmaster’s Handling of ‘The Eras Tour’: ‘It Really Pisses Me Off’
Taylor Swift has spoken out about ticket sales for her upcoming The Eras Tour. On Nov. 18, the singer-songwriter posted a statement explaining what she feels about the situation. While Swift did not directly name Ticketmaster, she did not hold back in making it clear she is angry about how Ticketmaster handled sales for The Eras Tour.
Taylor Swift called out Ticketmaster on Instagram
Through Ticketmaster, fans of Swift participated in different presales to purchase tickets for The Eras Tour. The presales experienced multiple delays and difficulties, and on Nov. 17, Ticketmaster canceled the planned general sale for tickets that was set to be held on Nov. 18.
On her Instagram story, Swift posted a statement on Nov. 18 about the ticket sales.
“Well. It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together, and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to imporve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do,” Swift began.
She continued, “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.”
In her statement, Swift also shifted some blame to Ticketmaster without directly naming the company.
“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,” Swift wrote. “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.”
The singer concluded her statement with an admission that she wants to find “more opportunities” to perform for fans who could not get tickets.
Ticketmaster responded to the controversy
Due to the issues surrounding sales for The Eras Tour, Ticketmaster caught negative attention from politicians, and it was announced that the Department of Justice is investigating Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation.
After Swift posted her statement on Twitter, Ticketmaster shared a blog post to explain why the presales, especially the TaylorSwiftTix Presale through Ticketmaster Verified Fan, went so badly.
According to the blog post, 1.5 million people were issued codes for the presale, and “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.”
Ticketmaster also explained that “based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)…that’s a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years.”
What fans think of Taylor Swift’s statement
Before Swift posted on Instagram, some fans of the singer expressed disappointment over her silence. Overall, the response to Swift’s statement seems positive based on fans’ reactions.
“I am honestly very surprised she said something – and even more surprised she actually dragged ticketmaster instead of brushing it off,” one fan wrote on Reddit.
Another fan wrote on Reddit, “It’s some real nice legal tapdancing she did honestly. No libel, no accusations, just the cold hard truth. She was able to lay blame exactly where it needed to be without breaking any contracts or putting herself in a bad position.”
However, some fans wished for more clarification on if there are remaining tickets that will eventually be available for the public to buy.
“I wish she would have addressed the reselling of the tickets. There are bots/scalpers who are have tickets for sale with 1000% margins. I’m not even a Taylor fan but if she banned resale of tickets, it would mean way more actual fans buy and attend,” a Reddit user wrote.
