The soap opera of the sale of tickets for the tour eras by Taylor Swift had an unexpected twist on Thursday: the official on-sale for the general public, scheduled for this Friday, was canceled by Ticketmaster.
“Due to the extraordinary demand on our ticketing systems and an insufficient inventory of remaining tickets to meet this demand, the public sale of [vendredi] for the tour eras by Taylor Swift has been cancelled,” Ticketmaster wrote on Twitter.
Concretely, this means that the admirers of the singer who had not obtained a code for the presale started on Tuesday will not have the opportunity to try to obtain a ticket and will probably have to fall back on resale sites where prices have already ignited.
Thursday, The Press found that a reseller registered on the StubHub site was asking nearly $38,000 for a floor seat for the concert scheduled for April 2023 in Houston, Texas.
Endless wait, bugs, service outages, soaring prices: thousands of admirers of the singer have expressed their dissatisfaction on social networks since Tuesday, according to Agence France-Presse. This rain of criticism is added to others aimed at the domination of the conglomerate formed by Live Nation and Ticketmaster in the entertainment industry and certain practices of the ticket sales site (hidden fees, use of “dynamic pricing” which skyrocketing prices).
A frenzy that exceeds expectations
The main shareholder of Ticketmaster put the failures of the pre-sale on the back of too much demand, Thursday, in an interview with CNBC. “The website [de Ticketmaster] was to open to 1.5 million authenticated Taylor Swift fans. We had 14 million, including robots, which are not supposed to be there, “said CNBC Greg Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media, the main shareholder of the giant formed from the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
Mr Maffei said Ticketmaster sold two million tickets on Tuesday and the demand for Taylor Swift’s tour was such that it “could have filled 900 stadiums”, a frenzy that “exceeded all expectations”.
The merged entity comprising Live Nation and Ticketmaster would control up to 70% of theaters and ticketing services, according to some of its critics who are campaigning for the dismantling of the conglomerate formed in 2010, also reports CNBC.