Taylor Swift broke her silence on the Ticketmaster ticket sale fiasco Friday.
Ticketmaster canceled the public sale of “The Eras Tour” after the site sold more than 2 million tickets during pre-sales for the event, leaving many fans upset and angry.
“It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” Swift wrote on social media.
“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.”
Swift’s silence originally frustrated fans, with many taking to Twitter to express their disappointment.
“I can’t support you celebrating your Grammy noms and continuing to release remixes that fans are forced to buy while U stay silent on the @Ticketmaster disaster,” a long-time fan wrote.
“I cannot believe Taylor Swift is still silent about Ticketmaster,” another wrote.
Another user tweeted, “@taylorswift13 staying silent through all of this speaks volumes. We’re all just a dollar sign.”
TAYLOR SWIFT FANS VENT FRUSTRATION OVER HER ‘SILENCE’ AMID TICKETMASTER FIASCO: IT ‘SPEAKS VOLUMES’
Many fans sat in the Ticketmaster queue for hours waiting to get Swift tickets during the pre-sale Tuesday. The ticket-selling site paused the Central Standard Time queues, delayed the West Coast times and pushed the Capital One presale to Wednesday to accommodate the demand.
“If Chick Fil A was in charge of the Ticketmaster queue I would’ve had Taylor Swift tickets within MINUTES just saying,” a Twitter user wrote.
“Sitting in the Ticketmaster queue while it’s paused really has me wishing i never heard a Taylor swift song in my life and that i didn’t know who she was,” another user added.
Ticketmaster later canceled the public on-sale of tickets set for Friday due to “high demand” and “insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”
After the cancelation, ticket prices skyrocketed on re-sale sites. Nosebleed seats at a multitude of venues topped $1,000 as of Friday. Tickets at the very top of Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City reached over $2,000.
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Fourteen million people attempted to buy Taylor Swift pre-sale tickets on Tuesday, the CEO of Ticketmaster’s largest shareholder claimed.
Greg Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media, opened up about the ticket fiasco during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” Verified fans were given codes to enter the Ticketmaster pre-sale on Tuesday, but many claimed their codes did not work.
“It’s a function of Taylor Swift. The site was supposed to open up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans,” Maffei said. “We had 14 million people hit the site, including bots, which are not supposed to be there.”
The demand “could have filled 900 stadiums,” he said.
