One Sale Too Many

Olivia Ground Social Media Editor

Anna-Lisse Lenard was disappointed.

She was disappointed she didn’t get tickets. She was disappointed she spent well over a day in the virtual queue, meaning a line of people waiting for their turn to purchase tickets. She was disappointed it felt like it was all for nothing.

But above all, she was disappointed that a company this big allowed it to happen.

Lenard, like many other fans, tried and ultimately failed to get Taylor Swift’s concert tickets.

“I was trying to hold on to hope because I [have] wanted to see her forever, since I was a little girl,” Lenard, second-year social work major at Ball State University, said. “I definitely was really frustrated. I felt like [the long queue] shouldn’t have been a mistake.”

The Eras Tour, Taylor Swift’s post-pandemic return, was less than satisfactory for fans like Lenard. Swift announced on social media she was returning to tour Nov. 1, 2022, later announceing 17 more shows to account for “unprecedented demand” 10 days later.

In the days leading up to the sale, Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift’s team provided “line boosts” to select fans, and Ticketmaster used a lottery system to release presale codes. If one received the line boost, one would be moved to the front end of the online queue to get tickets. But, if one got a line boost without a presale, the line boost was made useless. Presale was set to take place Nov. 15, 2022.

The first presale was supposed to take place for a smaller, select group of fans. On Nov. 15, 2022, at 2 p.m., users with a Capital One card were supposed to have their chance for tickets. General admission was to follow a few days later Nov.18, 2022, according to Ticketmaster in a “what to expect” series of Tweets. During the 72-hour time frame, there was a 10 hour long wait time for select shows due to long virtual waiting lines, pushed-back pre-sales and the cancelation of the general sale.

The long queue times fans like Lenard experienced happened for all of the shows in Taylor Swift’s the Eras Tour, including the show Lenard said she was trying to buy tickets for. The Ticketmaster site began to crash before the sale even started due to record-high web traffic, Ticketmaster said in a press release after the sale. Lenard shared she experienced the site crashing most of the day. Ticketmaster told fans already in the queue to remain there through a Twitter post.

“I was in three different classes trying to buy them,” Lenard said. “I did not care if I got in trouble.”

The Capital One presale that was originally scheduled for Nov. 15 at 2 p.m. was moved to the next day.

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