1 minute read
Ticketmaster scandal angers fans
from Arrow 2023 Issue 3
by uhsarrow
Taylor Swift’s fans are outraged after tickets for her upcoming tour caused Ticketmaster to crash. Now lawmakers are demanding answers about the company’s operations. The demand for pre-sale tickets for Swift’s upcoming tour caused the ticketing service Ticketmaster to crash, and fans on TikTok had many complaints about the whole fiasco.
“My mom was on Ticketmaster in the queue for five and a half hours,” senior Makenna Riggs said. “Luckily we were able to get the tickets, but it was super stressful.”
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Ticketmaster service delays and website crashes outraged fans trying to buy tickets to the superstar’s 2023 tour this week, causing widespread outcry and condemnation for the ticket service as high up as Congress. Finally, the company officials later announced they had decided to cancel the general ticket sale, blaming a surge of unregistered fans and billions of bots for the failure.
“I was the one of the first 8,000 people in line waiting to get tickets, and I got them in an hour,” junior Grace
Jenkins said. “My friend waited in line for hours and right when the website told her she was next to buy tickets, the website would crash and kick her out and she’d be all the way in the back of the line again. It was unfair for everyone, which explains why it was such an effort to get tickets.”
Fans already bought up more than 90% of the ticketing inventory, breaking the record for the most tickets ever sold in a single day by a touring artist at 2 million. With that success came the catastrophe. More than 3.5 million fans registered for the chance to buy Swift tickets.
“My mom was able to get a code for the pre-sale, and we ended up getting a pair of tickets,” senior Emma Clarke said. “However, a few days later we got an email from Ticketmaster that said they sold too many tickets and ours weren’t valid anymore.”
Company officials say, however, it wasn’t pre-registered fans buying tickets who caused the crash, but that tens of millions of uninvited fans and billions of bots trying to access the sale early were to blame.
