Taylor Swift slams Ticketmaster for her Eras Tour sales debacle: 'It really pisses me off'
Taylor Swift is standing up for her fans after Ticketmaster botched sales for her forthcoming Eras Tour.
One day after the company announced that a public ticket sale had been canceled due to "insufficient inventory," the singer-songwriter took to social media to slam it for putting Swifties through the ringer as they've attempted to purchase seats this past week.
"Well. It goes without saying that I'm extremely protective of my fans," she wrote on her Instagram Story. "We've been doing this for decades together and over the years, l've brought so many elements of my career in house. 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. It's really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse."
Arturo Holmes/FilmMagic Taylor Swift has slammed Ticketmaster for how it handled her Eras Tour ticket sales.
Swift's diehards first began experiencing difficulties securing tickets during Ticketmaster's Verified Fan presale on Tuesday, which was left them dealing with site errors, lost spots in the queue, and more than a five-hour wait time.
"There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets, and I'm trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward," Swift said. "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."
Taylor Swift/Instagram Taylor Swift's Instagram post addressing her Eras Tour sales disaster with Ticketmaster
While some fans were able to navigate their way through cyber-hell and come out victorious, the experience left many heartbroken. It doesn't help that resale ticket prices have skyrocketed since then, with prices ranging anywhere from $400 to $31,000-plus for a single ticket on websites like StubHub and SeatGeek.
"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," Swift concluded. "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. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means."
In a since-deleted statement published on Thursday, Ticketmaster explained that it received "unprecedented traffic" that caused its website to slow down.
"It usually takes us about an hour to sell through a stadium show, but we slowed down some sales and pushed back others to stabilize the systems," the company wrote. "The trade-off was longer wait times in queues for some fans."
The statement concluded, "While it's impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience, and that's what we're focused on."
Swift's Eras Tour includes 52 dates and kicks off Mar. 18 at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz.
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