Taylor Swift fans are distraught. To put it simply, Ticketmaster underestimated how many Swifties would be participating in the Eras Tour presale yesterday. “The site was supposed to be opened up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans,” said Liberty Media CEO and Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei. “We had 14 million people hit the site, including bots — another story — which are not supposed to be there.”
After a majority of the pop star’s fan base did not acquire tickets after hours of attempting, they called on Swift to speak out. Meanwhile, second-seller sites like Stubhub had tickets up from scalpers at absurd prices like $30,000. This fiasco ended with Ticketmaster canceling the general sale that would’ve been today.
And now, finally, Swift has posted a statement on he Instagram Story claiming that her team “asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.” She also noted, “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.”
Read the full statement below.
“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 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 recourse.
There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. 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. 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.
And 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.”