With around 82.4 million monthly Spotify listeners and 11 Grammys, Taylor Swift is easily one of the most influential celebrities of all time. With the release of her 10th studio album “Midnights” on Oct. 24, she broke the world record by having all top 10 of the Billboard 100 songs being from her album.

On Nov. 1, Swift announced that she would be going on tour across 17 US states for The Eras Tour. The international tours have not been planned. She would be selling her tickets via Ticketmaster. The Ticketmaster Verified Fan allowed a lottery system to pick millions of fans to have early access to tickets in the presale, which took place on Nov. 15. The Verified Plan limited the number of bots and gave the option to fans to sign up and have a bigger chance to be selected for tickets. The Capital One cardholders were given the opportunity to have early access for tickets the following day. The general public ticket sale was to take place on Friday, Nov. 18.

Ticketmaster said 14 million fans tried to buy presale tickets on Nov. 15 alone. In a single day, Ticketmaster was able to sell 2.4 million tickets with the presale. Due to the overflow of people on the app and website, millions of fans experienced malfunctions and waited hours just to leave the site with nothing. Even people who were able to get tickets were frustrated with their experience with Ticketmaster. Many waited all day in line and were angry at the difficulty of obtaining tickets.

With the overflow of tickets that Ticketmaster sold with both the Verified Fan presale and the Capital One presale, they announced that the general sale would have to be cancelled due to the excessive amounts of tickets that were sold. This left millions who were not selected for the presale, or who were selected but could not get tickets, empty-handed.

Swift took to Instagram to apologize to her fans, explaining that Ticketmaster assured her they would be able to handle such large numbers on the app. Swift assured her fans that she would be touring again and hoped that she could see them next time.

Resale tickets are now selling in the thousands of dollars. Those who were unable to buy the first time are looking to see where they can buy tickets, occasionally being scammed. Ticketmaster is now facing an investigation due to a possible monopoly.
If you were one of the few who were able to get tickets, congratulations and Merry Christmas!