Fans Upset Over Taylor Swift Ticket Resale For $20,000+
Originally scheduled for Friday, Ticketmaster said the general sale was not possible due to “extraordinarily high demand” for the tickets during presale and insufficient remaining stock.
Advance sales for the pop star’s first tour in five years began Tuesday, with Ticketmaster sending verified fans unique codes allowing them to purchase up to six tickets to most of the 52 Swift shows scheduled at arenas across the country were. But the whole process quickly descended into chaos as some codes didn’t work and digital queues of thousands of fans vying for tickets to each show date.
Ticketmaster quickly postponed Capital One’s second presale for credit cardholders by a full day to fix system glitches. But fans were already distraught and frustrated.
Despite the fact that the Verified Fans system was intended to prevent bots and scalpers from snagging tickets in front of real concert goers, they quickly appeared on the secondary market, in some cases trading for thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.
At the time of writing, a secondary market ticket for the show, which is scheduled for March 24, 2023 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, is priced at $23,520. A floor ticket for the May 12, 2023 show in Philadelphia was listed for $45,000. Ticketmaster says, “There are currently 90% fewer tickets for resale on secondary markets than usual for sale, and that’s exactly why the artistic team wanted to use Verified Fan to sell their tickets.”
When asked for comment, Ticketmaster pointed it out wealth on its website, where it wrote that it received 3.5 billion system requests on its website during the presale and sold over 2 million tickets on Tuesday alone, the most tickets it has ever sold in a single day. Earlier this week, the company said it was seeing “historically unprecedented demand” for tickets to Swift’s tour and asked fans to be patient.
“In the past, working with verified fan invite codes has worked because we’ve been able to manage the volume coming into the site to purchase tickets,” the company wrote in a blog post. “However, this time the overwhelming number of bot attacks and fans who did not have invite codes resulted in unprecedented traffic to our site.”
Many fans have turned to Reddit, TikTok, and Twitter to vent their frustration, blaming Ticketmaster and Swift themselves for their inability to get tickets. They have also begun discussing what they see as Ticketmaster’s monopoly on live events, a message reinforced by politicians like Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted that the company’s merger with Live Nation “never should have been approved, and they must be governed.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Wednesday sent a letter to Michael Rapino, president and CEO of Live Nation Entertainment, about the Swiftian mess.
“I am writing to express serious concern about the competitive landscape in the ticketing industry and its impact
detrimental effects on consumers,” Klobuchar wrote. “Reports of system outages, rising fees and complaints of behavior in violation of Ticketmaster’s Consent Decree indicate that Ticketmaster continues to abuse its market positions.”
Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, almost immediately drawing criticism that the move allowed Ticketmaster to increase prices and charge unnecessary fees.
Ticketmaster says that due to the volume of traffic on its website, Swift would have to list over 900 in-stadium shows during presale to satisfy their fans’ desire to see them live. She currently has 52 shows scheduled across the United States over the next year. International dates were not disclosed.
Swift has yet to publicly comment on the ticketing situation, and her fans have never heard such loud silence.
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