Lucky Taylor Swift fans were celebrating cautiously on Monday after receiving emails from Ticketmaster, the concert platform behind the disastrous “Eras” tour presale debacle.
Weeks after the cancellation of the general sale for the pop star’s highly anticipated tour, Ticketmaster is offering a limited number of “Verified Fans” the opportunity to request tickets via a series of staggered invitations that will be sent prior to Dec. 23.
For the selected fans, Ticketmaster will “send you a summary email that details the show and ticket(s) you’ve requested to purchase,” the platform explains in a blog post.
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“Your card won’t be charged at this time. After the request window has closed, we’ll send you an email to let you know if your request was confirmed. If confirmed, your card will be charged and you’ll receive instructions on how to claim your tickets so they appear in your Ticketmaster account.”
All sales are final, but if your request is not approved, your card won’t be charged, Ticketmaster says.
“We apologize for the difficulties you may have experienced, and have been asked by Taylor’s team to create this additional opportunity for you to purchase tickets,” Ticketmaster’s statement continues.
Taylor Swift fan Amina was selected to participate in the upcoming limited sale after an unsuccessful presale experience.
“I waited 4 hours in line for nothing,” Amina told The Daily Beast. “I entered and all the seats disappeared, only nosebleeds were available and since I’m flying from Uruguay just to see Taylor, nosebleeds weren’t enough to make all the trip actually.”
She ended up paying $900 for bowl tickets at MetLife stadium in New Jersey. She’ll try to request tickets via Ticketmaster, but “the possibility to get tickets is still so little, I think,” Amina said.
Ticketmaster cancelled the general sale for Taylor tickets after their initial Verified Fan presale drew unprecedented traffic, the website crashed and glitched, many fans were kicked out of the ticket queue empty-handed and over 2 million tickets were snapped up the first day, prompting furious backlash from Swifties, 26 of whom have since filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster’s parent company.
Following the debacle, The New York Times reported that the Justice Department had already opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent company, to determine whether the company’s dominance in the industry represents an abuse of power. Sources told the Times that the investigation was launched prior to the Eras presale. The Justice Department did not immediately return The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
“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,” Swift wrote on Instagram after news broke that the general sale had been cancelled.
With so many tickets already purchased via Ticketmaster and resale sites, questions remain about how many “Eras” tour tickets can still be purchased at face value.
The TikTok account fixthetswifttix estimates that after assessing the documented ticket sales and factoring in the tickets that have likely been held for corporate guests and radio partners, approximately 722,000 tickets remain available for sale. Ticketmaster did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
