Ticketmaster has issued an official apology to Taylor Swift and her fans following a ticketing disaster this week that left millions outraged – and MPs demanding answers about the company’s problematic operations.
The disaster came after many fans were unable to purchase tickets for the Grammy winner’s 2023 ‘Eras’ tour earlier this week, prompting Ticketmaster to cancel general sales.
“We want to apologize to Taylor and all her fans, especially those who had a terrible experience trying to buy tickets,” Ticketmaster he posted on Twitter Friday. “We feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to explain what happened.”
Ticketmaster also provided a link to an extended explanation website about why crowds of the pop star’s fans, known as Swifties, couldn’t buy tickets.
An occasion presale earlier this weekthe site crashed shortly after launch when over 14 million fans and a host of bots flooded the site, causing outages.
Sales for Swift’s new tour opened on Tuesday, but high demand quickly locked customers out of the sale, leaving fans who couldn’t share a ticket completely furious. Some even reported that the site sent them back to the start of a virtual queue of thousands in front of them after they tried to buy seats.
Numerous customers complained and reported that the platform would not upload or grant them access to tickets even if they had a pre-sale code for verified fans.
The “Bad Blood” singer spoke about the “horrific” incident, apologizing to her fans on Friday.
“It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” Swift he wrote in an Instagram story. “It’s very hard for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and it’s heartbreaking for me to see mistakes happen without any resolution,” he said in the message, which did not name Ticketmaster but did allusion to ticket failure.
“There are a multitude of reasons why people have had a hard time getting tickets, and I’m trying to figure out how to make it better in the future,” he continued. “I will not apologize to anyone because we have asked them several times if they can handle such requests and they have assured us that they can.”
He added that it was “really amazing” that 2.4 million people got tickets.
“But it really pisses me off that many of them feel like they’ve been through multiple bear attacks to get this,” she wrote.
Thursday, Ticketmaster he posted on Twitter that “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient ticket inventory remaining to meet that demand” were to blame and “Tomorrow’s sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras tournament has been cancelled.
The ticketing and distribution company announced earlier in the day that more than 3.5 million people had pre-registered for Swift’s fan-verified sale, the largest in its history, according to The New York Times.
After the cancellation, ticket prices rose on resale sites, with seats at various venues reaching more than $20,000 since Friday.
Addressing the incident, the singer wrote on Instagram: “And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to give them more opportunities to all come together and sing these songs.”
He added: “Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”
Fast recently added 17 data a Tour of the United States, which launches in March in Arizona and wraps up in August in Los Angeles. The tour will include 52 concerts.
