Just days after making headlines for all the wrong reasons — due to technical difficulties that resulted in canceling the general sale for the upcoming The Eras Tour — Ticketmaster issued an apology to Taylor Swift and her Swifties for the ticketing disaster that drew palpable anger.
The ticket sales and distribution company published a lengthy blog post in an attempt to break down what exactly led to its website crashing and hours-long waiting for fans lucky enough to nab a code for Swift’s Verified Fan presale. Ticketmaster said a record-breaking 3.5 million fans pre registered, and about half of those were able to score a presale code. But when Tuesday’s presale came, fans were met with technical difficulties and unable to purchase tickets.
What’s more, Ticketmaster also wound up delaying the West Coast onsales and pushed the Capital One presale to Wednesday in response to the website’s technical issues. It only got worse from there, as Ticketmaster was forced to cancel Friday’s general sale.
“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 Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour,” the blog post read. “First, we want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans — especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets. Next, we feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened.”
“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 Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour,” the blog post read. “First, we want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans — especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets. Next, we feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened.”
Ticketmaster had already said there was “unprecedented demand,” so much so that “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,” the company continued, “we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on.” (ET)