Taylor Swift Shares Statement On Concert Ticket Debacle: “It Really Pisses Me Off”

Amy Sussman/Getty Images

Taylor Swift Shares Statement On Concert Ticket Debacle: “It Really Pisses Me Off”

Amy Sussman/Getty Images

It was extremely difficult to buy Taylor Swift tickets this week. During the presale for Swift’s 2023 stadium tour, Ticketmaster crashed. Queues lasted hours. In the aftermath, the scheduled public onsale launch was canceled. It’s been enough of a debacle that lawmakers started chattering about breaking up Ticketmaster’s monopoly and the chairman of concert promoter Live Nation — which notoriously merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 — went on CNBC and argued there was nothing the platform could have done to prepare for the sheer quantity of Swifties angling for tickets.

Now Swift herself has weighed in via a message on her Instagram story. In the message, she says she’s brought many aspects of her career in-house in order to avoid these kinds of fiascos. She says Ticketmaster assured her multiple times that their servers could handle the extreme demand. And she declares that the poor user experience “really pisses me off.” Here’s the message in full:

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 felt 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 all to get together and sing these songs. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.

Presumably the bit about providing more opportunities does not mean she’s adding even more North American dates to this tour, but hey, crazier things have happened.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports that the Justice Department has opened an investigation into Ticketmaster, focused on whether Live Nation Entertainment has abused its power over the live music industry. Several anonymous sources told the Times that DOJ has been ongoing since before the Taylor Swift debacle and dates back several months.

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