Not only that, but tons of tickets are now being resold for thousands and thousands of dollars on secondary markets like StubHub, VividSeats, TickPick, etc, because scalpers across the country unfortunately got ahold of them first.
In some cases, we’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars, if you want a somewhat decent seat and not straight up in the nosebleeds. It’s beyond insane.
And as the cherry on top of this horrific week for the ticketing giant (which merged with Live Nation in 2010), they just announced that they’ll be canceling the public ticket on-sale, which was supposed to take place tomorrow, due to “extremely high demands”:
Yikes…
Just yesterday, Liberty Media chief Greg Maffei told CNBC that Ticketmaster sold more than two million tickets on Tuesday (beyond crazy), and demand for all the shows on her upcoming 52-date tour “could have filled 900 stadiums.”
Taylor’s recent Midnights album broke streaming records immediately upon its release, and she hasn’t toured since 2018, so it’s safe to say her hardcore fanbase is foaming at the mouth to see her live again, especially with this new music out.
So while I guess there were some fans who scored tickets in the pre sales, it sucks to hear that most won’t even get the chance to try tomorrow with any sort of public on-sale.
They’re understandably very upset, and plenty of them have been on Twitter all week voicing their discontent, though these are by far some of the more tame ones I’ve seen:
And while a ton of the blame does fall directly on Ticketmaster and the way they’ve handled (or not handled) the situation, artists do have the choice to opt out of dynamic pricing, which does account for a lot of the reasoning that the tickets get so high so quickly.
And that’s certainly not the sole reason for this massive debacle in terms of volume on the site itself, but it should be noted that they don’t have to allow that for their personal ticket sales, and many don’t, like Taylor’s fellow pop star Ed Sheeran, for example.
Country star Zach Bryan has also been voicing his disdain for Ticketmaster, tweeting earlier that he also tried (and sounds like purchased) tickets to one of Taylor’s show, but shelled out a pretty penny to get them:
He’s been tweeting out a ton of stuff about all of this lately, reiterating many times that “all my homies hate Ticketmaster,” and also hinting that he’s cookin’ up a different strategy for the few shows he plays next year…
Will the man of the people himself, Mr. Bryan, be able to dry up these tears with a new way to sell tickets? Only time will tell…
At this point, I think it’s safe to say that we all hate Ticketmaster, and it simply sucks for fans who wanted to see Taylor on her extensive run next year.