Taylor Swift Finally Releases Statement About Ticketmaster Mess, Mentions Bear Attacks?
Taylor Swift has finally released a statement after Tuesday's disastrous presale ticket rollout for her upcoming Eras Tour.
Four days after many fans were shut out from being able to purchase Ticketmaster's Verified fan presale tickets, only to then have the ticket platform cancel the entire general on sale on Friday, Swift wrote a message on her Instagram.
"Well. It goes without saying that I'm extremely protective of my fans," Swift says. Before adding that she tries to keep a lot of work in-house to specifically avoid these types of situations. "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."
Taylor Swift Instagram post on Ticketmaster presale mess.
Swift went on to say that she's not going to make excuses for Ticketmaster or anyone. She says her team asked them multiple times if they were able to handle the expected demand of ticket buyers, and they assured her they could.
TICKETMASTER SAID THEY SAW UNPRECEDENTED WEBSITE TRAFFIC
On Thursday, Live Nation (which is a part of Ticketmaster) Chairman Greg Maffei said that the Ticketmaster.com website was simply overwhelmed.
Meffie told CNBC that the company expected 1.5 million verified fans. Instead, over 14 million people as well as bots all visited the website at the same time. Consequently, the website crashed, people had to wait in virtual queues for hours, and some Verified passcodes didn't work.
TAYLOR SWIFT TICKETS BEING RESOLD FOR THOUSANDS
Those that were unable to get presale tickets put their hope into today's general sale. However, last night Ticketmaster made the unprecedented move of CANCELLING the entire general on-sale due to "insufficient ticket inventory to meet the demand."
My question is, if Ticketmaster controlled all the presale tickets, and were only supposed to sell a LIMITED amount of them... then where the hell did all the tickets go? Something doesn't add up.
Some on social media criticized Swift for not commenting earlier on the matter. However, most of the backlash is still against Ticketmaster.
Unfortunately, the only way that fans can see the upcoming tour may be through the secondary market. Those tickets are already going for thousands of dollars.
TURBULENT TIMES FOR TICKETMASTER
Ticketmaster's debacle is a public relations nightmare, and it may get worse.
The Justice Department is opening an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment and whether they abused their power through Ticketmaster over the live music industry.