The Taylor Swift On Sale Explained The Eras on sale made one thing clear: Taylor Swift is an unstoppable force and continues to set records. We strive to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets for the Eras Tour. We want to share some information to help explain what happened: WE KNEW A RECORD NUMBER OF FANS WANTED TAYLOR TICKETS By requiring registrations, Verified Fan is designed to help manage high demand shows – identifying real humans and weeding out bots. Keeping bots out of queues and avoiding overcrowding helps to make waits shorter and on sales smoother. That’s why Taylor’s touring team AEG and The Messina Touring Group chose to use Verified Fan for her on sales. Based on fan interest at registration we knew this would be big. Over 3.5 million people pre-registered for Taylor’s Verified Fan, which is the largest registration in history. The huge demand for Taylor’s tour informed the artist team’s decision to add additional dates – doubling the tour and number of tickets available so more fans could make it to shows. Historically, around 40% of invited fans actually show up and buy tickets, and most purchase an average of 3 tickets. So working with the artist team, around 1.5 million people were invited to participate in the on sale for all 52 show dates, including the 47 sold by Ticketmaster. The remaining 2 million Verified Fans were put on the waiting list. THE DEMAND FOR TAYLOR BROKE RECORDS – AND PARTS OF OUR WEBSITE Historically, working with Verified Fan invite codes has worked as we’ve been able to manage the volume coming into the site to shop for tickets. However, this time the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak. Never before has a Verified Fan on sale sparked so much attention – or uninvited volume. This disrupted the predictability and reliability that is the hallmark of our Verified Fan platform. 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 trade off was longer wait times in queue for some fans. Overall, we estimate about 15% of interactions across the site experienced issues, and that’s 15% too many, including passcode validation errors that caused fans to lose tickets they had carted. DESPITE THE DISRUPTIONS, SWIFTIES POWERED THROUGH AND HELPED TAYLOR SET A NEW RECORD Over 2 million tickets were sold for Taylor’s shows on Nov. 15 – the most tickets ever sold for an artist in a single day. Every ticket was sold to a buyer with a Verified Fan code. 90% fewer tickets are currently posted for resale on secondary markets than a typical on sale, which is exactly why the artist team wanted to use Verified Fan to sell their tickets. Ticketmaster is not currently reselling any Taylor tickets. Beyond Taylor’s on sale, we also sold another 1 million tickets for other events across our site on Tuesday. The biggest venues and artists turn to us because we have the leading ticketing technology in the world – that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and clearly for Taylor’s on sale it wasn’t. But we’re always working to improve the ticket buying experience. Especially for high demand on sales, which continue to test new limits. Even when a high demand on sale goes flawlessly from a tech perspective, many fans are left empty handed. For example: based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)…that’s a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years. 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.
I have no evidence for this claim lol but I feel like Taylor is disappointed about the backlash because she can't brag post about the records this tour has broken yet without upsetting more people
Kinda feel like this was a no win situation. Take away the technical issues with TM and scalpers for a second and I think you still can’t avoid an absolute shit show. Demand for these tickets was just absurdly high, I get the desire to be like hurr durr capitalism, but isn’t supply and demand like 90% of the issue here? Price tickets accordingly and Taylor looks greedy. Price tickets “fairly” and many people get shut out. Gatekeep tickets behind fanhood and only crazy people get to go. Someone’s always gonna lose. (It is a little funny to me that this tour tried all three options to a degree and it was still a disaster.) There’s gotta be a fix to the scalper problem, and I feel like if you have a system where you can wait in queue for 5 hours and not have a clear knowledge of if that means if you’ll get tickets or not, that’s a bad system. But also just a lot of people want to go to these shows and I don’t think there’s a way to fix that where someone’s not unhappy.
LOL at the notion that the filthy casuals who weren’t invited still showed up (how dare they, this is a private party) and that what broke the site. also the “Historically, around 40% of invited fans actually show up and buy tickets” I find very hard to believe.
It's so weird that people are actively trying to gatekeep... the biggest pop artist since Michael Jackson. It's like the weird metalheads that were trying to gatekeep Metallica after Stranger Things last summer. I've seen TikTok videos claiming that straight men shouldn't be allowed to have tickets, all men shouldn't be allowed to have tickets, ugly men shouldn't be allowed to have tickets, fans who don't know self-titled b-sides by heart shouldn't have tickets, etc, etc, etc... like. She's not a secret.
I saw a tiktok that was clearly a joke but said only people who owned her perfume as a kid should have tickets and I was like I know it's a joke but also I was an adult when that perfume came out and now I feel old so it's not funny!!! Dang youths thinking they're the main characters
that would be nuts if they did something like that. but like, what if taylor was like "fuck this, whole thing is cancelled" lol
Her fans would riot. Maybe her team will start another “pLaNdEmIc” and they’ll be FORCED to cancel the tour, like Loverfest all over again.
The thing that upsets me about this (anyone being serious) is how inherently cruel it is. Like what about some 12 year old kid out there who is ecstatic to see Taylor at their first concert. They're ok just stripping that ticket from them? Or a fan who truly hasn't been able to afford it or figure out how to make it work until now? The entitlement is off the charts.
I know I'm not old yet but one day on that app will make anyone feel like they're ready for old age lol.
It’s not the sort of statement you want, but it also feels like the sort of statement she can legally make.
its better than not saying anything at all. Clearly she's pissed. Maybe she will do another tour in 2024. Whatever...over it. Moving on. blah blah blah.
As much as I love Taylor, there’s a part of me that expected her to be like “For those that couldn’t make it, I’m offering a rare opportunity to buy special ‘I couldn’t get tickets’ merchandise.”