Taylor Swift resale ticket prices soar over $30K after Ticketmaster snafu
Global News
Additional tickets are scheduled to be made available to the general public on Friday, in what will most likely be another online frenzy.
With ticket prices this high, some Taylor Swift fans will only be seeing the artist in their Wildest Dreams.
On Tuesday, hopeful American fans rushed to Live Nation’s Ticketmaster website to try and score pre-sale tickets to Swift’s The Eras Tour, but technical outages, long wait times and limited availability left many panicked and disappointed.
By Wednesday, tickets had been pushed onto resale websites like StubHub for tens of thousands of dollars. Reuters reported some early ticketholders were trying to sell their seats for as much as US$28,000 ($37,430).
Originally priced tickets ranged from US$49 ($65) to $449 ($600) each.
The upcoming tour will see Swift, 32, perform 52 shows across the U.S. There are no Canadian dates on Swift’s upcoming tour, but many fans north of the border had planned on heading south to catch a show — but maybe not at these prices.
Tuesday’s “Verified Fan” presale (a system used by many popular artists) provides special digital codes to certain fans to buy tickets before the general sale. It is intended to deter scalpers and bots from purchasing tickets, though the success of Verified Fan pre-sales is unclear.
Ticketmaster released a statement that claimed Tuesday’s presale resulted in “historically unprecedented demand.” It said millions of people joined the queue to try and purchase tickets.
