(UPDATE: 11/17/22 AT 5:30 P.M. ET): Ticketmaster has canceled the general ticket sale for Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated and record-breaking Eras Tour, which was set to begin on Nov. 18. “Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled,” the company tweeted on the evening of Nov. 17. It is unclear what will happen to the few remaining tickets.
(ORIGINAL STORY): So many Swifties have been on an emotional rollercoaster trying to secure tickets to Taylor Swift’s upcoming Eras Tour in 2023. The Ticketmaster presale ran into a wide array of issues, and Sara Haines called on the “All Too Well” singer to speak up about the problems that fans ran into while trying to get tickets for the show. The View co-host also called on the company to be broken up during a “Hot Topic” discussion on the show on Thursday, November 17.
Sara detailed some of the problems that people experienced using Ticketmaster’s “Verified Fan” presale and said that Taylor should say something. “[Ticketmaster] knew this was coming. They were having people waiting in queues with codes they didn’t have, enter before they were sitting there,” she said. “Taylor Swift loves her fans. She does need to speak up because I think people are really upset right now about what’s going on. I don’t know if there’s a quick fix from her, but I’m sure it would be comforting.”
Besides the issues that Swifties ran into when trying to buy tickets, the talk show host also detailed many other aspects of the ticketing company that frustate fans. “In addition to Ticketmaster being a monopoly, and by the way, they charge egregious fees, and that fee is charged whether they serve you well or don’t,” she said. “They need to break this thing up completely.”
Sara’s co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin also said that even though Taylor’s fans had “a really rough 48 hours,” she did say that she had some hope that her fans could make some real impact. “If there’s any voting block that’s brave enough and strong enough to take down Ticketmaster once and for all, it’s the Swifties. So, they better wake up, because people are outraged over this,” she said.
Following the rush to get tickets, Ticketmaster released a statement updating fans on the status of the presale on Twitter. They changed the presale times for West Coast tour dates and moved the presale for Capital One cardholders to the following day.
After the Ticketmaster debacle, a number of politicians spoke out against the company, which is merged with Live Nation, saying they felt the company was “Treacherous.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)and Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) all took to Twitter to call out the company, with the Connecticut senator speaking about the Midnights singer directly. “Taylor Swift’s tour sale is a perfect example of how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger harms consumers by creating a near-monopoly. I’ve long urged DOJ to investigate the state of competition in the ticketing industry. Consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior,” he tweeted.
While many fans felt like they were “lying on the cold, hard ground” after the presale, Live Nation chairman and Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei spoke about the issues that Ticketmaster ran into in an interview with CNBC on Thursday, November 17. “All the Live Nation team is sympathetic that the long wait times and the fans that they couldn’t get what they wanted. The reality is it’s a function of the massive demand that Taylor Swift has,” he said. “Despite all the challenges and the breakdowns, we did sell over 2 million tickets that day. We could’ve filled 900 stadiums, and the reality is this is not actually a Live Nation-promoted concert. Taylor Swift is promoted by one of our largest competitors [AEG]. 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 the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world.”
Taylor has not addressed the ticketing issues that fans have run into. General on-sale begins on Friday, November 18.