Taylor Swift.Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Taylor Swiftis opening up about the difficulty many fans experienced while attempting to purchase tickets to her upcomingEras Tour.
In a note posted to Swift’sInstagram Storyon Friday, the singer-songwriter appeared to express frustration at Ticketmaster’s inability to handle the demand for tickets after a reported 14 million fans attempted to score seats for the tour’s 52 dates during presale — prompting the company tocancel planned ticket sales to the general public.
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She then spoke to the “multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets,” noting that she’s “trying to figure out how this situation can be improved going forward.”
“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could,” continued Swift. “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.”
Taylor Swift Instagram Story
Finally, Swift addressed fans who were unable to score seats to the concerts. “And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs,” the statement read. “Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”
A representative for Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent company, did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan presale for the Eras Tour kicked off Tuesday, and more than 2 million tickets were sold, which broke the service’s record for most single-day ticket sales.
Those who didn’t get tickets were left waiting in hours-long Ticketmaster queues that eventually either crashed or sold out. The company later issued a statement via Twitter about “historically unprecedented demand” for tickets to the tour. A Capital One cardholder presale scheduled for the same day was postponed to Wednesday — before the planned general sale for all other customers was canceled altogether.
Taylor Swift.Terry Wyatt/Getty
“Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale forTaylor Swift| The Eras Tour has been cancelled,” read atweetposted to the official Ticketmaster account on Thursday.
In a recent interview withCNBC, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei (Liberty owns part of Live Nation, of which Ticketmaster is a subsidiary), blamed the chaos on “massive demand” for Swift tickets.
“The site was supposed to be opened up for 1.5 million verifiedTaylor Swiftfans,” he said. “We had 14 million people hit the site — including bots, another story, which are not supposed to be there — and despite all the challenges and the breakdowns, we did sell over 2 million tickets that day.”
The Eras Tour is set to kick off in March in Arizona, and will hit a number of cities across the U.S. before wrapping things up in Los Angeles in August.
source: people.com
