Taylor Swift announced her Eras Tour on November 1st, 2022. This tour is special as she will be performing songs from every one of her 10 albums. This is also her first tour since the pandemic as well as the release of 3 new albums Evermore, Folklore, and Midnights and the “Taylors’ Version” of her albums Red and Fearless. This is a huge deal for Taylor’s fans, also known as ”swifties”. Tour dates were released that same day and included 20 US cities and 52 shows. International dates have not been released. Based on Taylor’s growing popularity, people speculated that this will be one of the biggest tours in music history.
Tickets were only available for purchase through Ticketmaster. Fans had the chance to register as “verified fans” through Ticketmaster. From there verified fans enter a lottery which gives them access to get access to presale tickets while others are put on a waitlist. Presale gives fans access to tickets a few days before tickets go on sale for the general public 3.5 million people signed up for this presale. November 15th was the day of the presale and also the downfall of Ticketmaster.
Once the day came, fans were able to enter the virtual waiting room at 10 am local time of the venue. This is when the chaos began. Many fans were not able to even enter their codes to get into the waiting room. Others were able to claim tickets but lost them before they could purchase them, some people were in the waiting room for over 8 hours. These glitches continued to get worse as the day went on. As more and more people got on the website, fewer people were able to successfully purchase tickets.14 million people visited the site that day. With all of this madness, it was surprising that anyone was able to get tickets at all. By the end of the day, 90 percent of tickets were sold.
With most of the tickets gone, Ticketmaster canceled their general sale the next day. On November 18th Ticketmaster releases a statement that provided some explanation as to what happened. They blamed their technical issues on bots and barely mentioned the fact that they were simply not ready to handle this big of a demand. Taylor herself releases a statement on how she is really “pissed off” with Ticketmaster.
That same day, speculation comes out that the Department of Justice had begun an investigation into Ticketmaster. On December 5th, Ticketmaster gets sued by fans. The lawsuit accuses Ticketmaster of violating the state’s Cartwright Act and Unfair Competition Law, fraud, misrepresentation, and fraudulent inducement, according to Deadline. The hearing was held Monday, March 27, 2023. The plaintiffs wanted $2,500 for each violation from Ticketmaster. With this being said the plaintiffs stated that it really is not about the money and instead is about doing what is right. Ticketmaster is going to attempt to settle the matter out of court. The next hearing will be held May 27, 2023.
