Taylor Swift breaks silence on Ticketmaster Era tour sales fiasco

WASHINGTON — Taylor Swift is speaking out about her upcoming stadium tour after all the chaos of the week surrounding Ticketmaster sales.

“There are a variety of reasons people have had such a hard time getting tickets and I’m trying to figure out how to improve the situation in the future.” Swift said in a lengthy statement that was released on Instagram Stories.

On Tuesday, a 52-date Verified Fan presale event for their Eras Tour caused Ticketmaster’s website to crash, leaving many fans without tickets. Anyone who got hold of tickets by chance had to deal with long online queues and error messages along the way.

Then Ticketmaster said it would cancel Friday’s planned general public sale because it didn’t have enough inventory.

Swift noted Friday that she’s brought many elements of her career in-house “to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it herself with my team who care about my fans as much as I do.”

“It’s really difficult for me to entrust those relationships and allegiances to an outside entity and it’s excruciating for me just to watch failure happen without recourse,” she added.

Swift explained that she and her team had asked Ticketmaster several times if they could handle this type of demand, “and we were assured they could.”

“It’s really amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that many of them feel like they went through multiple bear attacks to get them. And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to give us all more opportunities to get together and sing the songs,” Swift said.

Ticketmaster previously said two million tickets for Swift’s 2023 tour were sold during Tuesday’s presale, the most tickets ever sold on the platform in a single day.

Taylor Swift’s full statement:

“So. It goes without saying that I am extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this together for decades and over the years I’ve brought so many elements of my career into the house. I’ve done this purposefully to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care about my fans as much as I do. It’s really difficult for me to entrust those relationships and loyalties to an outside entity , and it’s excruciating for me just to watch mistakes happen without recourse.

There are a variety of reasons people have had such a hard time getting tickets and I’m trying to figure out how the situation can be improved in the future. I will not apologize to anyone because we ask them several times if they can handle this kind of demand and we were assured that they could. It’s really amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets but it really pisses me off that many of them feel like they went through multiple bear attacks to get them. And for those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that I hope we have more opportunities to all get together and sing the songs. Thanks for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”