Taylor Swift breaks silence on Ticketmaster drama for Eras Tour
Taylor Swift has responded to the ongoing drama surrounding Ticketmaster sales for her upcoming Eras Tour.
"Well. It goes without saying that I'm extremely protective of my fans. We've been doing this for decades together and over the years, I've brought so many elements of my career in house," Swift said in a statement shared to Instagram story on Friday, Nov. 18. "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," she continued.
Swift added that she's aware of the "multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets" and she's "trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward."
Without mentioning Ticketmaster by name, Swift said she wouldn't "make excuses" for anyone. The "All Too Well" singer said her team asked "multiple times" if the company could handle the demand and her team was "assured they could."
While she said she finds it "truly amazing" millions of fans were still able to secure tickets, Swift added that it "really pisses me off" that many "feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them."
Swift also sent a message to those who were unsuccessful.
"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," she wrote. "Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means."
Swift announced that she was headed back on tour on the Nov. 1 episode of "Good Morning America." The superstar's Eras Tour kicks off in the U.S. on March 17, 2023 and is currently scheduled to run through Aug. 9, 2023. International dates will be announced at a later date.
The presale for tickets began Tuesday, Nov. 15, for those who had registered as a Ticketmaster Verified Fan and received a code to purchase tickets. Despite this process, fans experienced long -- sometimes hours-long -- wait times as well as "error" messages when trying to check out.
Additionally, fans looking to purchase a resale tickets are now facing price tags from several hundred dollars all the way up to tens of thousands of dollars a piece.
Ticketmaster responded to criticisms over its handling of the the presale on Thursday, saying in a statement that it "knew this would be big" and blaming the site outages and other technical issues on a bombardment of "bot attacks."
The company said over 3.5 million people had registered for presale event, which they noted was "the largest registration in history." Of those, 1.5 million fans were given codes. It said a "staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn't have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic to our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests -- 4x our previous peak."
"Never before has a Verified Fan on sale sparked so much attention," Ticketmaster's statement continued. "Over 2 million tickets were sold for Taylor's shows on Nov. 15 -- the most tickets ever sold for an artist in a single day."
The company added that "every ticket was sold to a buyer with a Verified Fan code."
Ticketmaster also said it was focused on ways to "improve the experience" in the wake of the Eras Tour issues.
Fans who had been hoping to snag a ticket in the general ticket sale, which was originally scheduled to open on Friday, also found themselves out of luck this week. Given the overwhelming demand, Ticketmaster on Thursday afternoon canceled the general ticket sale, citing "insufficient" inventory. It remains unclear if a general ticket sale will be rescheduled.
"Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory due to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled," Ticketmaster tweeted on Thursday.
The controversy has sparked renewed calls to split up Ticketmaster and concert promoter Live Nation, which merged in 2010. As ABC News reported previously, the companies currently control 70% of primary ticketing and live event venues.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti also said Wednesday that he would be looking into whether Ticketmaster violated consumer protection laws during the Eras Tour presale.
"We have received complaints about the sale process, and we have previously looked into antitrust allegations involving Ticketmaster and Live Nation," he told reporters, according to a transcript of the news conference obtained by ABC News. "We want to make sure that there are no issues here that merit legal response."
