It’s Thursday afternoon and all you can think about is how many devices your family owns that you could log into Ticketmaster with. After the Verified Fan and Capital One pre-sales failed for pop superstar Taylor Swift’s stadium tour The Eras Tour, Friday’s sale is all you have. But suddenly, your phone buzzes with the Twitter notification that Ticketmaster has canceled the general sale for the tour. This means that if you didn’t get Verified Fan or hold a Capital One pre-sale, you never had a chance of buying tickets to the tour directly from Ticketmaster, a disappointment to many, especially since Swift hasn’t toured in almost five years.
While on stage at the Music Television Video Music Awards (MTV VMAs) accepting the “Video of the Year” award “All Too Well: The Short Film,” Swift announced her tenth studio album, “Midnights.”
“The stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life, will be out October 21. Meet me at Midnight,” Swift later said in an Instagram post.
Only 11 days later, Swift announced The Eras Tour, in which fans will be able to follow Taylor throughout all the musical eras of her career, from 2006 to 2022. Show dates were announced on a later day and fans within the DMV area were disappointed to learn that she wouldn’t be coming to the local FedEx Field.
“[I’m] frustrated. I have a friend in Philly so I’m just trying to go stay with her there,” AP Psychology teacher Melanie Schwed said.
Though her absence in the area limits fans, many plan to travel to the closest show in Philadelphia, leaving Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and DC fans to fight for tickets for one of the three nights at Lincoln Financial Field. Though the competition for tickets was high at every show during presales, this had to be one of the most intense ones.
“I, fortunately, was one of the few people who successfully got tickets during the Verified Fan presale, so I’m very excited to see her. My favorite era to see is reputation because it includes some of my favorite songs and was her most iconic era in my opinion,” sophomore Megan Raue said.
The Verified Fan and Capital One presales run by Ticketmaster during the week of November 13 were a mess, with website glitches that put people in the back of the queue and invalidated verified fan codes they had distributed. Only a fraction of the Ticketmaster verified fans actually got to reap the benefits of getting tickets before the general public.
“The queue wait was hours, and when I got to buy tickets, the presale code wouldn’t work and I got kicked out of Ticketmaster. So [when] I went back in the queue and got to buy tickets the second time, they were all sold out,” sophomore Annabelle De Jesus said.
After so many failures from the Verified Fan and Capital One presale, Ticketmaster announced the day before the general ticket sale that the sale would be canceled due to glitches and an inadequate number of tickets remaining. Fans were enraged, not only with Ticketmaster but with the artist herself, as Swift hadn’t immediately spoken out about the issue. Fans were concerned that she would stay silent about it, considering her partnership with Ticketmaster is vital to her ability to tour.
“I understand that it wasn’t Taylor’s fault, but I still think she should’ve said something sooner to address the situation. So many fans, including myself, were relying on [the] general sale, so the sudden cancellation was really upsetting,” freshman Charlotte Delong said.
