Ticketmaster crashes during Eras presale
December 15, 2022
On Nov. 16, presale for tickets to Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour, Eras, began on Ticketmaster.com. Verified Fans were given the opportunity to apply to receive a presale code and be the first to purchase tickets. However, after the sale started, technical issues began to arise and Ticketmaster crashed.
According to npr.org, these events were due to extreme amounts of fans attempting to buy tickets at the exact same time and evidently overloading the website. Some of the problems this caused were that fans accepted for the presale code never actually received the code, people waiting to purchase tickets were getting automatically kicked out of the website or they would continuously get pushed further back in the queue making it near impossible to make any purchases. Junior Claire Oswald said, “The site crashed almost immediately and didn’t put us back into the queue to actually buy tickets until almost 1:00 p.m.”
Another problem that arose was that the Capital One Cardholder Presale was rescheduled from Tuesday to Wednesday, and the sale only lasted a few hours before completely selling out. Along with that, Ticketmaster unfortunately had to cancel the general sale due to the extremely high demand for tickets and the insufficient amount of tickets that remained.
Many fans were not only upset that they were not successful in buying tickets, but that people who are not “true fans” were getting them. They also thought that Ticketmaster should have been prepared for a situation like this to happen. Seeing as Taylor Swift is one of the biggest musical artists in the world right now, it is expected that millions want a shot to see her live and would try to buy tickets. Sophomore Jordan Otte said, “They should have been more prepared for this because it’s Taylor Swift, and a lot of people like her music.”
The artist reached out through social media to address the problem and how it would be handled. Swift said, “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.” She expressed her sympathy towards her fans who failed to get tickets, and shared her gratitude with the fans who have continued to support her throughout her career.
According to FOX5, Swift was assured that the website would be able to handle the intensity of the sale, so the crash was very unexpected and no backup plans had been made. 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
FOX5 also wrote that Ticketmaster made a statement on Nov. 17 which said that although the site crashed, they still managed to sell two million tickets, which is the most tickets to ever be sold on the platform in a single day. Ticketmaster made a public apology addressing the inconvenience. They said, “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.”
Despite these upsetting events, the Eras tour is still scheduled to run from Mar. 27, 2023 through Aug. 9, 2023. Taylor Swift will be performing 52 concerts throughout the U.S beginning in Arizona and ending in California. Although tickets cannot be purchased through Ticketmaster, many people will be reselling them until the tour begins, so be sure to keep an eye out for them.
