LIKE many other Swifties, I was a victim of Ticketmaster’s long queues and failed pre-sales.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has caused an uproar online after many superfans were denied tickets even with pre-sale codes.
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The Swifties are one of the biggest fanbases in the world, so I was prepared for a fight, but as Taylor said, getting tickets was like going “through several bear attacks.”
The Verified Fan pre-sale began Tuesday morning at 10am, and I was geared up to enter the queue by 9.30am.
Those who registered for fan codes found out if they were eligible the night before.
After frantically checking my email all day Monday, my friend finally received a code making us eligible for the pre-sale.
Pre-sales require codes to access which is intended to keep bots from buying tickets and ensuring fans have a better chance.
Ticketmaster’s website states: “This gives you the chance to book before the general release, which often means there are fewer people competing for the pool of tickets available.”
As we would soon come to realize, there were still millions of people competing for tickets.
Once 10am hit, we were directed to the queue and sat behind 2,000+ people for over an hour.
Finally, we were under 1,000, then under 100, until nearly an hour and a half later we entered the seat selection.
A brief moment of excitement was met with instant panic after our Verified Fan code prompted an error message.
After re-trying the code again and again we were redirected back to the end of the queue.
Hours later the queue finally dwindled and this time our code worked, but bots beat us to it.
The Capitol One pre-sale was my last chance at snagging tickets before they went up to the general public.
Once again I was right on time with my code ready and waiting for the 2,000+ people ahead to select their seats.
The queue began and after hours of waiting, I was redirected to a countdown to the general sale, where I could buy with everyone else.
I knew the general sale would be insane, but I decided to try one last time until Ticketmaster announced on Twitter they would be canceling it due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”
Ticketmasters’ inability to accommodate the demand for Taylor Swift tickets has exposed the monopoly the ticketing site has on live music.
The ticket fiasco prompted the Justice Department to investigate antitrust violations by the owner of Ticketmaster, according to the New York Times.
The internet has been in an uproar all week, calling for the site to disband and eliminate the bots that have made seeing live shows astronomically expensive.
Ticketmaster needs to start putting tickets back into the hands of actual fans instead of resellers.
As Taylor said herself, it’s excruciating “to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”