Taylor Swift on Ticketmaster debacle: “It really pisses me off”
If you were one of the estimated 15 million people who tried to get tickets to Taylor Swift‘s recent pre-sale for her upcoming ‘Eras Tour’, chances are you probably aren’t very happy with Ticketmaster. During the initial rollout, high demand crashed the (alleged) monopoly of a ticket seller’s website, leading to the cancellation of the general sale.
Today, Swift has responded to the debacle on her Instagram story. While being critical of the way Ticketmaster handled the situation, Swift also clearly didn’t want to jeopardise her deal or get sued for her statement. Instead, it’s a bit of a lukewarm response where Swift doesn’t want to admit to being a part of the problem.
“It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” Swift writes. “We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in-house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”
“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,” Swift added. “It’s 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.”
“And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs,” Swift concludes. “Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”
In other words, Swift probably knew that this was going to happen and doesn’t want you to be mad at her for it. The last paragraph, in particular, appears to be a very tepid admission that there won’t actually be anything fans can do to get into the shows other than pay outrageous prices on the secondary market.
In similar news, Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation is reportedly set to be investigated by the United States Justice Department. Somewhere out in the world, the members of Pearl Jam are giving us all a big “I told you so”. Hey, it could be worse: Swift could be taking the Bruce Springsteen position of defending Ticketmaster’s lucrative actions.
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