Taylor Swift Fans Share Struggle to Score ‘Eras’ Tickets: ‘Proof That the ’Hunger Games‘ Could Actually Happen’
The hour Swifties have been breathlessly waiting for finally arrived on Monday morning (Nov. 15) when presale tickets for some dates for Taylor Swift‘s 2023 Eras U.S. stadium tour went on sale at 10 a.m. And, as you might expect of Taylor’s first tour in five years, the rush to secure a golden ticket was intense.
In fact, Downdetector reporting a surge in outages on the Ticketmaster site around the time of the onsale; spokespeople for Ticketmaster and Swift had not returned a request for comment about reported outages at press time. Billboard attempted to log into the TM site and app several times during the onsale and was unable to load the site amid reports that it was freezing and/or crashing despite fans having pre-sale codes.
A spokesperson for TM told CNN Business Tuesday morning that the “site is not down” and that “people are actively purchasing tickets… Fans who have received a code to the TaylorSwiftTix Presale should login and access the queue through the link they received via text rather than entering through the Ticketmaster homepage. This will ensure an optimal shopping experience.”
The reaction to the reported lags and difficulties securing tickets were well-documented by frustrated Swifties — including this writer’s college-aged daughter, who reported from Vermont that “everyone here is freaking out about getting Taylor Swift tickets… no one is getting them… in my lecture if you looked around everyone was on Ticketmaster.”
“The Taylor Swift ticket presale is proof that the Hunger Games could actually happen in real life,” read one tweet about the frenzied sale, while another frustrated clicker was less polite, writing, “if anything will force ticketmaster to finally get their s–t together it’ll be hundreds of thousands of angry taylor swift fans willing to murder someone in cold blood for eras tour tickets.”
The singer added 17 more shows to the now-52-date tour that will celebrate all 10 of her studio albums released since 2006. The massive outing will now set up shop in some cities for two or three nights, including multiple nights in Glendale (AZ), Las Vegas, Arlington (TX), Tampa, Houston, Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Denver and Los Angeles (where she’ll play five nights). The U.S. leg is currently slated to kick off on March 18 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
While some tried to have a good attitude about the issues, including one who wrote, “taylor swift really wasn’t lying when she said ‘i vowed not to cry anymore if we survived the great war’ about getting tickets for the eras tour,” others were livid that things didn’t work out as they’d expected. “Can Taylor Swift fans have a redo on tickets sales?” one asked. “@Ticketmaster clearly wasn’t prepared for this amount of traffic, and all verified fans with actual presale codes are unable to buy tickets. The site has done nothing but crash.” The TM Fan Support account posted an update nearly 11 a.m. ET, telling Swifties, “We are aware fans may be experiencing intermittent issues with the site and are urgently working to resolve.”
Though some joyfully posted about scoring the sought-after tickets, others just wondered what was going on. “Did anyone actually get Taylor Swift tickets,” a fan wondered. Swift hasn’t hit the road since 2018, when she launched her best-selling Reputation Tour. She had planned to go out again after dropping 2019’s Lover for a series of stadium shows she dubbed Lover Fest, but the gigs were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For those keeping score at home, this means that Tay has six albums-worth of new material that she’s never played live — if you include the previously unreleased vault tracks on 2021’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version). Studio albums Folklore, Evermore and, of course her latest, Midnights, which have all also been released in the time between Lover and the Eras Tour.
Check out some of the reactions to the “Eras” presale madness below.
Gil Kaufman
Billboard
