Taylor Swift fans, or “Swifties”, are currently having “bad blood” with the company Ticketmaster after complications with the online ticket vendor occurred with presale purchasing of the Taylor Swift “The Eras Tour” on Tuesday. On November 1, Taylor Swift made an announcement on “Good Morning America” that she would be going on tour. “The Eras Tour” is her first comeback tour in four years since “The Reputation Stadium Tour” in 2018. Fans who wanted early access to tickets were allowed to sign up for Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan system and
patiently awaited an email on November 14 confirming whether they were being allowed to participate in the presale.

The Swifties became irate once a pattern of fans came out saying that they got waitlisted,  upset that they couldn’t participate. Fans pointed out that some got emails saying that as a loyal fan, they would get boosted in line for the presale, but that didn’t happen as they got waitlisted in long queues instead. The email read, “Due to historic demand for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour, you are currently on the waitlist.” If you were one of the lucky ones that got a code, fans weren’t out of the woods just yet, as some claimed that their access codes weren’t working, and they couldn’t enter the queue.

The problems didn’t stop there as people who were waiting in the queue reported that the site had crashed and that they lost their place in line while others who had waited hours couldn’t check their tickets out and had been put back in line. Inaccurate presale codes, upwards of six-hour waits, and website crashes compounded the website’s issues. 

User @FranPan wrote, “Ticketmaster have a monopoly on being venues where massively in demand artists play, charge extortionate booking and ‘handling’ fees, but then apparently can’t hack a presale bcus demand for one of the worlds biggest artists who hasn’t performed since pre–Rona is ‘unprecedented”. 

Even politicians have sounded off on Twitter talking about how Ticketmaster is a monopoly. US Representative Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez tweeted, “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in. Break them up.” Senator Richard Blumenthal tweeted, “Taylor Swift’s tour sale is a perfect example of how the LiveNation/Ticketmaster merger harms consumers by creating a near–monopoly. I’ve urged the DOJ to investigate the state of competition in the ticketing industry. Consumers deserve better than this anti–hero behavior.”

The Swifties’ frustration continued as they had to deal with ticketing scalping. Tickets on Stubhub were as high as $34,000 for a Nashville show, making getting tickets out of reach for many. Getting tickets for any concert is a very stressful experience, and the fans are ‘seeing red’ as “The Eras Tour” is no exception.