For many, the battle to get Taylor Swift tickets was not an easy one. There were wins and losses, blood and tears (OK, maybe not blood), and many, many refreshes on the Ticketmaster webpage. Amidst the chaos, a number of familiar names, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Swift herself, addressed the controversy surrounding the Ticketmaster website. Fans and celebrities alike have criticized Ticketmaster for being a monopoly, where people have been hoarding tickets and reselling them for double the price. Others were unimpressed, to say the least, by the errors that kept popping up on the site. All in all, the Eras Tour ticket sales have been a nightmare — and the situation hasn’t even tried to dress itself like a daydream.
From Capital Card cardholders being shut out of pre-sales to Ticketmaster ultimately canceling ticket sales, the process has snowballed into an even greater catastrophe. However, some were lucky enough to make it out of the ticket-war alive — and triumphantly, at that. Over two million fans will be attending the Eras Tour, and the rest of us can only envy them. Whether you won the fight or waved your white flag, the overwhelming demand for tickets shows how loyal Swifties are. And even if you were unsuccessful, at least you have a story to tell your grandchildren when they ask what you were doing mid Nov. 2022.
- A Partial Win
-
“Luckily, a few of my friends and I got presale codes and were able to purchase tickets. However, the supposed ‘boost’ we were supposed to get from having had Loverfest tickets clearly wasn’t honored because we waited about six hours before getting through.” — Carli Brennan, 22, graduate from Fashion Institute of Technology
- Now we’ve got bad blood, Ticketmaster
-
“I was unable to score tickets and quite frankly, it was a bit of a nightmare. I am a big fangirl so like it’s not my first rodeo, but I spent [over three] hours in the queue only to get paused multiple times. When I finally got in, ticket prices [were] already through the roof. My friend who managed to get in earlier had gotten nosebleeds for $50, and when I got in, those same tickets were between $80 to $115 before fees. It’s a huge bummer since I have never been able to see her live and I was finding more updates on Twitter rather than on the Ticketmaster site itself.” — Alana Torres, 21, senior at Florida State University
- More the Merrier, Right?
-
“When I bought my tickets, I just bought the max[imum] number since I didn’t know how many of my friends would want to go. They weren’t the worst seats, but definitely not the best. In the end, I had two extra tickets, and decided that I just wanted to sell them. I sold them for $300 — it wasn’t my goal to make a profit on them, but I saw on Stubhub that similar tickets were going for over $1,000 each.” — Sammie F., 23, graduate from Robert Morris University
- Glitch, Please
-
“My experience was incredibly frustrating. My friend and I had planned to try to get tickets for our group and we were on FaceTime the entire time to keep each other updated on our status. We waited in the queue from our own respective presale links. She was boosted, I was not. I was let in about 20 minutes after the presale started. She did not get in until about two hours in. No matter what tickets I clicked on, I got error messages. After attempting to buy tickets for over an hour, I was finally able to get to checkout. Before the page had finished loading, I was kicked out and put back onto the seating map and again not being able to select any seats. Soon after, my friend was let in and also only got error messages. By this point, almost all of the tickets were gone. Then, when I tried to go to checkout with selected tickets, I was kicked out of the seating map and sent to the back of the queue behind [over] 2,000 people. By the time I got back in, all the tickets were gone and neither of us were able to buy the tickets.” — Alana Denenberg, 21, student at The College of New Jersey
- Accepting Defeat
-
“My sister and I tried snagging tickets for one of the Santa Clara show during the presale, and it was a *nightmare,* TBH. I was stuck in the queue with over 2,000 people in front of me for nearly two hours and hardly moved an inch. While my sister was able to get past the queue, she was unable to get tickets since Ticketmaster kept sending her numerous error messages. After checking Twitter and seeing that other users were having the same issue, we gave up.” — Zoë Hecht, 22, graduate from Loyola Marymount University
- Total Blackout
-
“My only memory [from trying to get tickets] is sitting in the break room of the hospital I work at with a bunch of my coworkers and setting my laptop on a pedestal and all of us watching the screen while the queue was paused, and then for the next hour and a half, people kept saying, ‘You’re still at 113?!’ All of that to get the last row of the stadium and the cheapest tickets available.” — Kayleigh Z., 22, graduate from The University of Pittsburgh
