Pop star Taylor Swift issued a statement Friday after a botched on-sale of her 2023 stadium tour that caused many of her fans to wait hours for tickets only to come up empty-handed.
Her statement read:
“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. 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. I'm not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. 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. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”
Tickets first went on sale Tuesday. Unlike most presales, Ticketmaster implemented a Verified Fan program, which gave codes for some fans to purchase up to six tickets at once. Many Taylor Swift fans, however, were put on a waiting list for tickets.
Others were allowed to purchase tickets through a Capital One presale on Wednesday. That too prompted challenges among Swift fans.
Since announcing her The Eras Tour, Swift added 25 shows due to demand. All of the shows are being played in large football stadiums.
Ultimately, many fans were hoping that a public on-sale would give them one last chance to purchase tickets to one of her 53 concerts. Instead, Ticketmaster said it would cancel the public on-sale, which was supposed to occur on Friday.
In a now-deleted Ticketmaster statement, the company said that over 3.5 million fans applied for Verified Fan codes. Ticketmaster gave codes to 1.5 million fans putting 2 million others on a waitlist.
Ticketmaster said it expected about 30% of those with codes actually would make a purchase. The company said that a customer with a code on average buys three tickets.
