In the wake of extreme public outcry and one of the worst ticket presale operations of all time, ticket-selling monopoly Ticketmaster has cancelled sales for Taylor Swift tickets, which were supposed to go on sale to the public on Friday.
Ticketmaster shared the news in a tweet on Thursday. “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.”
This is maybe not the worst move as Ticketmaster simply couldn’t handle the demand online for tickets during the presale, which left some people in a queue of thousands only for the site to crash multiple times. There was another issue with a lack of seats for people who require accessible seating.
Swift has yet to mention the fiasco directly, but she did seemingly refer to the issue when she announced how happy she was for getting nominated for song of the year for the son “All Too Well (10 Minute Version).”
“So many reasons to lose my damn mind today,” the singer said during the presale, before pivoting to better news. Ticketmaster has been getting the brunt of the criticism for simply not being able to provide an easy ticket-buying experience, especially since they’re the only game in town.
Some politicians are even getting involved. Tennessee’s Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said he received numerous complaints about Ticketmaster’s “lack of customer service.” He also said that the incident “could be an indicator that there’s not enough competition in the market.”
New York congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also called for the company to be broken up, saying it needs to be “reigned in” after its Live Nation merger.
People continued to dunk on the company in the replies to the announcement. “Shouldn’t you guys have prepared for this or did you guys not know what “historically high demand” meant when you sent those emails,” someone tweeted.
“It doesn’t matter cause they still get their $50+ per ticket. They have NO incentive to make it better. They’re the problem,” someone replied. A look at the company’s Twitter feed over the last few days shows just how much flak the company has been getting over the issue, including a lengthy update after things went haywire.
Ticketmaster has been using the words “unprecedented” and “historic” when describing the issue but has been short on results to solve the problem. To make matters worse, scalpers are reselling tickets for up to $42,000 a pop.
The Eras tour kicks off on March 18 in Glendale, Arizona.
