Taylor Swift finally broke her silence on Friday after Ticketmaster crashed this week for fans with presale codes for her “Eras Tour” and then the site canceled the public sale of tickets because of “extraordinarily high demand.”
In a message shared on the 32-year-old singer’s Instagram story, Swift said she was “assured” by Ticketmaster, owned by Live Nation, multiple times that it could “handle this kind of demand” and admitted the debacle “really pisses [her] off.”
“Well it goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” the pop star wrote. “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.”
Taylor Swift releases statement regarding the Ticketmaster sale of her Eras Tour:
“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.” pic.twitter.com/zrDWK8dIHg
— Pop Base (@PopBase) November 18, 2022
“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 added. “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,” Swift continued. “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.”
The “Love Story” hitmaker closed out her post by thanking fans for “wanting to be there” and telling them they have “no idea how much” it means to her.
The “Shake It Off” hitmaker’s comments came after Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino offered an explanation for the crash of the Ticketmaster site on the day presale tickets were available, the Hollywood Reporter reported.
“We invited a million and a half on that day to come and buy those tickets, but it’s kind of like having a party,” Rapino shared. “Everybody crashed that door at the same time with 3.5 billion requests.”
“We sold 2 million tickets, the most we’ve ever sold in one day in history, and another million tickets of other artists on the same day,” he added. “So although we regret it was a slowdown in some queues and some error codes for a short period for some fans, we did manage to recover.”
On Thursday, fans who were still hoping to get tickets to Swift’s upcoming concert tour were upset when Ticketmaster posted a message on Twitter that read, “due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.”
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