After the release of Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album, Midnights, she announced a 2023-2024 tour called “The Eras Tour,” which will celebrate all of her fan-proclaimed “eras,” or albums. However, fans struggled to get tickets, even in the presale, including many Northwest Academy students.
Swift used Ticketmaster and their program, Verified Fan, for ticketing. Verified Fan is designed to combat ticket scalpers and weed out bots. More than 3.5 million people signed up, but only 1.5 million fans were sent presale codes and instructions to log into the queue. To help boost their chances of getting a presale code, many fans bought merch or albums from Swift within a certain period of time. Fans could also move ahead in line if they had tickets to see Swift’s prior tour that were canceled because of the pandemic.
Still, even some fans that were boosted did not get presale codes. After many fans and bots without codes clicked onto the Ticketmaster queue, the site crashed. Ticketmaster says their system experienced 14 million requests when tickets went on sale. After the presale fiasco, the general sale was canceled by Ticketmaster out of fear of further issues and a lack of remaining tickets.
Even though Northwest Academy sophomore Lila Satori logged onto Ticketmaster an hour early, there were already 2,000 people in line in front of her. When she got the opportunity to purchase tickets, the site glitched several times. She tried again and again, but was unsuccessful.
“I get in [to buy tickets],” Satori said. “I’m so stressed. I select tickets, and it’s like, ‘You cannot select these.’ That happens 10 times and I’m like ‘F**k.’”
Junior Tatum Wolfsmith also tried to get tickets. She bought several pieces of merch to boost her chances of getting a code. Because Ticketmaster crashed, she spent six hours waiting in the queue to get tickets.
“It was a mess and it was stressful because there were so many people and [the site] kept crashing,” Wolfsmith said.
Some who weren’t able to purchase tickets have not given up hope. Satori says that if Swift doesn’t give her the opportunity to buy tickets directly, she will get more expensive ones via other means.
“If it comes down to it, I will get tickets off like a second party site to go to the concert,” said Satori. “We want to go so badly. If I have to wait outside for tickets or something like that, I’ll do that. If I have to pay all this money, I will find a way to do it.”
Swift recognized this demand, and recently announced that she will be selling the remaining tickets to some fans who got boosted, but waitlisted. She will be doing this through Ticketmaster. The Washington Post reports that there are only 163,000 tickets left in all markets. Satori, however, did not get this extra opportunity.
Wolfsmith believes that there is a better way to sell the remaining tickets. She thinks it is unfair that many fans didn’t get an opportunity to get tickets.
“I think they (the remaining tickets) should go in general sale because there [was] never [a] general sale, which I think is really messed up,” said Wolfsmith. “It isn’t [a] fair shot for everyone. You had to be special or get lucky.”
In response to this disaster, Swift released a statement on Instagram. She claimed she “was not going to make excuses for anyone,” because her team communicated the demand to Ticketmaster, and was assured that they could handle it.
“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,” said Swift. “To those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”
Wolfsmith felt that Swift needed to acknowledge what her fans went through to a greater degree.
“It sounds a little like blowing it off,” said Wolfsmith. “[I want her to] kind of make up for the [number] of Swifties who didn’t get tickets, and how hard it was because of who she chose [to] partner with.”
Meanwhile, senior Pritam Khalsa appreciated the fact that Swift didn’t defend Ticketmaster.
“Honestly, [it was] kind of brave to call out Ticketmaster directly because they are a monopoly, and they do control a lot of [ticket] sales,” said Khalsa.
Though she got tickets, Khalsa considered the process to be stressful. Ticketmaster crashed at the original sale time of 10:00 AM, which forced the company to reschedule the presale to later in the day. Khalsa re-logged onto Ticketmaster to buy tickets at 2:30 PM, and was sent to the queue at 3:00 PM, where she waited for 30 minutes.
“[The site] kept crashing, and nothing was loading,” said Khalsa. “I checked my email [at] ten thirty, [and] I got an email from them saying that they’re rescheduling it to 3 PM.”
Khalsa is not alone in this stress. In fact, this disaster drew criticism from all sides. Politicians, the U.S Justice Department (DOJ) and, of course, Swift’s fans all expressed their thoughts on this subject.
“I read a lot of really great things from AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and other politicians being like ‘This is a bad company,” said Ava Schaefer, a senior, who got shut out. “[Ticketmaster has] had problems for a while, and it’s about time someone does something about it.”
Going beyond just criticism, some of Swift’s fans are suing Ticketmaster. According to the Washington Post, the fans’ reasoning is that Ticketmaster allegedly sent fans presale codes while knowing their system would not be able to accommodate the demand.
Satori believes that a lawsuit is good not only for Swifties, but for anyone who wants to buy tickets in general. Wolfsmith also paid $200 in fees for “convenience” to the company, on top of the money she spent on tickets.
“It shouldn’t be this hard to see an artist you love, especially when people are willing to pay so much money,” said Satori.
While Khalsa agrees that Ticketmaster should have been aware of the sheer volume of people desperate for tickets, she is unsure if a lawsuit is the right way to go. If the sale caused people to miss work and school, then she thinks it might be more justifiable.
“Some people feel very entitled to get tickets,” said Khalsa. “If I hadn’t gotten tickets, I would have been really upset, but they are just concert tickets. It’s not like Taylor herself promised me that I was gonna get them.”
Although Khalsa believes that the fans’ lawsuit should be reconsidered, she is in full support of the DOJ’s investigation of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, for being a monopoly.
Schaefer wants to see Ticketmaster be forced to make big changes. She originally got waitlisted by Verified Fan, but was able to purchase tickets on a resale site. She blames Ticketmaster for her stress.
“Concerts give you a shared community,” Schaefer said. “You come and support this person whose music has touched you and [play] a huge role in your life. Ticketmaster is taking that and using it to their advantage to make money.”
I liked this commentary. It presented arguments from several perspectives and also was a current topic that so many people have experienced.