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Taylor Swift’s The Era’s Tour ticket presale crash left many fans disappointed and questioning Ticketmaster.
Taylor Swift announced her first tour in four years on November 1. On November 15, Ticketmaster held a presale, which was a raffle for those who signed up and received a presale code through email. Due to the high demand of Ms. Swift's fans on the page, the Ticketmaster website crashed during the presale. Greg Maffei, chairman of LiveNation, which merged with Ticketmaster, told CNBC that the demand for the tickets could have filled 900 stadiums. The Capital One presale was rescheduled and general sale was later canceled by Ticketmaster due to high demand and lack of tickets. Originally, the tickets were priced from $49 to $499, according to Axios.com. Fans can now only buy tickets from reseller websites, such as SeatGeek, where the lowest prices currently range from about $285 to $750.
When buying tickets with presale on Ticketmaster, a fan goes into a waiting room, then the queue, and finally picks their tickets once they are let in. Then, they enter their presale code after choosing their tickets. Due to this process and the crash, many fans claim they were let down, including EHHS science teacher, Ms. Ellery Riccio. Ms. Riccio had a presale code and was hoping to buy tickets for Gillette Stadium. She expected the process “to be crazy but realistically crazy.'' She says the website crashed for her before the tickets even went on sale. After a long wait in the queue, she picked her seats but they all “disappeared as [she] clicked on them.” A few hours later she returned to the site and no seats were left besides the last row. However, even when she tried to purchase those tickets, they disappeared too. On the other hand, Junior, Hailey Mazzucco, bought tickets through the presale and said the process was “actually very easy” and that she had no issues. She paid $170 for the lower bowl at Gillette Stadium. Hailey believes this was a reasonable price to pay and was happy with her experience.
Ms. Riccio doesn’t plan on going to the concert anymore. She said “I still want to go but realistically, I can’t afford it.” Many EHHS students who wanted to go will also no longer be going due to the high price. Senior, Glerys Ramirez, says “I would have liked to go but I have to focus on more important expenses.” Some don’t think buying the ticket is worth it, such as sophomore Joe Allen, who says he would not spend that much money on concert tickets. Others disagree, such as juniors Katelyn Webster and Lainie D’Auria, who do think the price is worth it because of the experience they will get from seeing their favorite artists in person.
Other artists fans have had issues with Ticketmaster too. Senior, Mia Flores-Soto, says although the problem with Ticketmaster has only been rising in the news recently, “it has been a problem for K-pop fans for years.” Back in May, senior, Jessica Gambardella, tried to purchase tickets for the K-pop band, Tomorrow X Together, and had “a terrible experience.” Jessica claims she waited an hour to get into the presale and all the tickets were gone. The tickets for the band were originally $200, according to Jessica, but she ended up paying $1000 through a reseller website.
Taylor Swift addressed the presale crash through her Instagram story on November 18. She wrote: “It is truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.” Many believe that Ticketmaster is to blame, although there was no mention of Ticketmaster in Taylor’s post. According to The Washington Post, over two dozen fans are suing Ticketmaster for fraud and violations. In the future, concertgoers hope changes will be made to Ticketmaster. Senior, Sydney Herard, said the process of the queue should be improved. Ms. Riccio and Jessica both agree that a lower limit should be set on the amount of tickets one can buy. Ms. Riccio also thinks no one should be allowed to sell tickets for more than what they were purchased for and the presale code should be entered before getting in the queue.
Ticketmaster was created in 1976 by Albert Leffler and Peter Gadwa. According to referenceforbusiness.com, they created the site because when you bought tickets in the past, you had to select from only the seats the vendor had. If they were nearly sold out, the person may be forced to buy bad seats or people would be waiting in line and then the ticket vendor would sell out, so they created a computerized ticket vendor.
