What did Taylor Swift say about the Ticketmaster drama? Anti-Hero singer slams company for presale tickets fiasco

Taylor Swift recently shared her thoughts on the Ticketmaster fiasco around her upcoming tour's tickets. She claimed the company oversold its assurances of being able to handle the volume. Swift also apologized to fans for the inconvenience and vowed to try and rectify the issue.

On November 17, 2022, Ticketmaster issued a statement via Twitter, canceling Swift's tour ticket sales, citing "extraordinarily high demand on the ticketing system" and "insufficient remaining ticket inventory."

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Fans were naturally disappointed and displeased, which Taylor Swift has now addressed through a story posted on her Instagram account. Swift has even admitted that the company's actions have hurt the relationship between her and her fans.

"It really pisses me off" - Taylor Swift disappointed with Ticketmaster trouble

Earlier this month, Taylor Swift announced The Eras Tour, which is slated to feature songs from all her albums. Her first since 2018's Reputation tour, The Eras Tour tour kicks off on March 17, 2023, in Arizona, and ends in August in California.

Poster for the tour (image via Wikimedia commons)

Before the sale started, media outlets described the demand for the tickets as "unprecedented" and "astronomical." Over 3.5 million users registered for the pre-sales, which started on November 15, 2022.

However, the heavy site traffic led to the Ticketmaster website crashing on November 17, 2022, which prompted the company to cancel the sales scheduled for the following day.

In a blog post, the company revealed that it sold a record of over 2 million tickets on November 15, 2022.

Following Ticketmaster's tweet announcing the cancelation of the "public on-sale" for Swift's tour, the artist shared her thoughts about the incident on November 18, 2022, through her Instagram stories.

In the statement, Swift apologized for the entire debacle and stated that she was "trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward." Taylor further stated that she was not "going to make excuses."

After the sale went online, fans spent hours (some up to eight hours) in virtual queues before they were kicked out of the line. In her statement, Taylor Swift asserted that she was "extremely protective" of her fans.

"We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in-house."

She further wrote:

"I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do."

Continuing:

"It's truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them."

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The Shake It Off singer added that she found it difficult to trust "outside entities" when it came to fan experience and that it was "excruciating" for her to see mistakes happen without any alternative.

She also expressed her disappointment with Ticketmaster for the mismanaged online ticket sales, especially since they had repeatedly assured the singer and her team of their capabilities.

Taylor Swift went on to state that she hoped to provide more opportunities for those who didn't get tickets, so they could "get together and sing these songs." She ended the message by thanking her fans for wanting to be at her concerts.

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Tickets that were initially priced between $49 and $449 have now shot up, with some going as high as $22,000 on ticket reseller websites. After the backlash from Taylor Swift fans and even politicians, some fans have pointed to the company's recent merger with Live Nation Entertainment as the reason for the ticket fiasco.

Ticketmaster has not yet clarified if they would reschedule the sale or if any tickets remain.