Ticket Master beware, you might have unleashed the wrath of a major Swiftie swarm after this week’s Taylor Swift concert ticket debacle.
Swift released her 10th studio album “Midnights” on Oct. 21 and announced her long-awaited return to the stage with The Eras Tour just over a week later.
With the inclusion of “Midnights,” she has four albums yet to be heard live by her following – known as Swifties – and the long wait for Swift to belt across stadiums nationwide had fans all over eagerly awaiting the sale of concert tickets.
Ticket sale details:Ticketmaster cancels general ticket sale for Taylor Swift tour after ‘extraordinarily high demands’
Unfortunately, the pre-concert hype was short-lived. Most of those Swifties ran into various troubles this week while attempting to secure their stadium seats.
Following several days of turbulence for fans hoping to score tickets on the site, Ticketmaster announced it would cancel a scheduled general public ticket sale for her upcoming Eras tour after “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”
That hasn’t gone over well with Delaware fans.
“I’m definitely a very, very big fan. I just want to be there and hear her and sing to the songs,” said Kylie Sica, 17, a Charter School of Wilmington student.
Sica signed up for the presale, and asked her parents to as well, but neither of them was selected for presale codes.
Despite this, there was still hope that a friend, who had a code, would be able to get tickets for herself, along with Sica and her family. The friend spent an entire school day waiting in the Ticketmaster queue and was unable to get any tickets.
The next day, Sica used her mom’s Capital One card for the cardholder sale and ran into even more disappointment.
Deciding to stay after school to ensure there would be no interruptions to her spot in the queue, Sica finally made it past thousands of fans to enter her card details. Except Ticketmaster kept rejecting the card.
“We were like, ‘are we reading this wrong? I was annoyed because I’m sitting there with the card, that’s meant for this, and it’s not working,” she said.
Her mom later tried and was able to get through the process and add tickets to her cart but was kicked off the sight multiple times as soon as she attempted to pay for them.
Now that the general public sale has been axed, Sica might resort to resale tickets, which are priced at $400 for nosebleeds.
“Maybe I’ll just ask for that for Christmas or my birthday,” said Sica. “I would love for [Swift] to add more dates but I know that would be hard on her.”
Fans of the Superstar are no stranger to pulling out all the stops when it comes to securing concert tickets, but this year’s charade took it to a whole new level.
Fans have taken to social media to voice frustrations about this week’s turn of events.
“I waited in a queue for over six hours in a pre-sale that you had to have a code to even get into […] By the time they let me in to buy…the tickets were gone,” a Facebook user said.
“This was literally the craziest thing I ever experienced,” said another user.
Lauren Rowe, of Wilmington, is a Capital One cardholder who attempted to get tickets during the presale offer on Tuesday as a Christmas gift for a friend of hers who was diagnosed with lung cancer last yet.
She logged on to Ticketmaster and spent a few hours waiting for tickets, repeatedly getting kicked out of the queue or receiving a message saying her code was not working. In the end, she was unable to get tickets.
“I know everybody has their reason, but that just makes it more frustrating,” said Rowe. “You’re thinking ‘gosh what do I have to do to get a chance at getting a ticket?’”
Local fan Stephanie Ripanti – a self-proclaimed “insane Tay fan”- made it to the front of the queue only to have her elation squashed when the site crashed and she found herself back in the queue, this time behind at least 2,000 people, she said.
Ripanti and her daughter have been to several Swift concerts and were looking forward to this one being the “most epic,” she said.
“I’m not gonna give up. I’m still gonna try. It looks a little dim but, you know, a Christmas miracle could still happen,” said Rowe. “I know everybody has to get their tickets but it really feels like Ticketmaster made a major faux pas out of this.”
In a statement posted to Swift’s official Instagram account Friday afternoon, the singer expressed her disappointment with ticket sales this week, adding that she is “extremely protective” of her fans and hoped sale scheduling would have been beneficial for her them.
“I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. 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 remorse,” Swift’s statement said.
