Ticketmaster bosses clearly didn’t pay attention to Taylor Swift’s unprecedented Billboard Hot 100 top-10 monopolization. Did they miss the news that Swift’s Midnights album enjoyed the biggest first-week numbers since 2015? There has to be a reason why Ticketmaster underestimated how many people would be clamoring for The Eras Tour tickets, Swift’s first tour in four years. And the general public sale hasn’t even started yet.
Swifties dealt with technical difficulties during this week’s presale, which began Tuesday, November 15 — from a stagnant queue to Ticketmaster crashing altogether. “There has been historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up to buy tickets for the TaylorSwiftTix presale,” Ticketmaster’s Fan Support statement read, in part, during the outage.
Liberty Media CEO and Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei provided a more detailed explanation on CNBC today (November 17). Maffei was asked about US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet calling for the dissolution of the Live Nation and Ticketmaster merger.
“First, all the Live Nation team is sympathetic that the long wait times and fans who couldn’t get what they wanted,” Maffei said. “Reality is, it’s a function of the massive demand that Taylor Swift has. The site was supposed to be opened up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans. We had 14 million people hit the site, including bots — another story — which are not supposed to be there. And despite all the challenges and breakdowns, we did we sell over two million tickets that day. We could’ve filled 900 stadiums.”
Liberty Media CEO and Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei responds to the Taylor Swift ticket fiasco: “I apologize to all our fans. We are working hard on this.” https://t.co/C8ATt6B2Kn pic.twitter.com/4bePfAtdxz
— CNBC (@CNBC) November 17, 2022
Maffei then directly responded to AOC’s tweet, “And the reality is, this is not actually a Live Nation-promoted concert. Taylor Swift is promoted by one of our largest competitors. So though AOC may not like every element of our business, interestingly, AEG, our competitor who is the promoter for Taylor Swift, chose to use us because we are, in reality, the largest and most effective ticket-seller in the world.”
AOC wasn’t the only politician to chime in on Ticketmaster’s failure. Tennessee attorney general Jonathan Skrmetti raised questions over potential consumer protection law violations.
For those lucky enough to attend The Eras Tour, it will be Swift’s longest US run to date after she added 17 shows to her already ambitious stadium trek. It will kick off on March 17, 2023, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. The grand finale will be a five-date stretch at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium in early August.
The general public sale begins 10 a.m. local time tomorrow (November 18). Buckle up.