Taylor Swift fans have been left fuming after Ticketmaster called off its plan to sell tickets to the public for her upcoming Eras tour.
The highly-anticipated stadium tour has been a hot talking point online ever since it was announced earlier this month. As per Official Charts, the tour will begin in the US before it expands out to other global destinations and will feature other superstar guests including Paramore, HAIM and Phoebe Bridgers.
Combined with the release of Swift's 10th studio album, Midnights, just days prior, it's no wonder that fans have been left disappointed over Ticketmaster's sudden decision to cancel public ticket sales.
On Friday, the entertainment ticketing company posted an update to Twitter in which it announced the U-turn, stating that "high demands" and "insufficient ticket inventory" are the reasons that prompted it.
"Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled," it tweeted.
The company added that two million tickets were sold during pre-sales on Tuesday, the most ever sold on the platform in a single day, but due to the growing number of fans accessing the site and numerous system crashes, by the end of the chaotic week, the company was forced to suspend sales altogether.
Of course the news didn't sit well with Swifties who have been waiting to get their hands on Eras tickets. They took to the comments to give Ticketmaster a piece of their minds.
"Soooo you planned this when? YOU SENT THE CODES, you knew the demand was very high and yet, most of us were unable to get our tickets in the section wanted, still you promised to the other fans to have their opportunity and now this? WAIVE YOUR FEES YOU ARE NOT DOING YOUR JOB," said one angry user.
"What is this cancellation gonna do??" Wrote another. "Are y’all gonna built a stadium with a capacity of 1M to fit all the seats that you shouldn’t have sold during presale? y’all are so unserious, do better."
A third raised a good point: "Would you guys care to comment on how hundreds of fans with presale AND boosts were unable to get tickets, but hundreds of scalpers were able to get multiple tickets through VERIFIED FAN presale and are now reselling them for THOUSANDS of dollars?"
According to screenshots posted online, some tickets that have already been bought by supposed fans are being re-sold for thousands of dollars - and we're not talking just a few thousand here, we're talking extortionate numbers.
And fans of the 32-year-old singer weren't the only ones who weighed in on the situation.
Ticketmaster was also subjected to criticism from Democratic US senator Amy Klobuchar, The Guardian reported.
In a letter to Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment Inc, Klobuchar voiced "serious concern about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also tweeted about the matter after Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program, which was supposed to deter bots and scalpers from buying and reselling tickets, left Swifties empty-handed after the site crashed when unique codes were being retrieved.
She wrote: "Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned [sic] in. They need to break up."
Meanwhile, Jonathan Skrmettil, Tennessee's Attorney General, also announced that he and his team would be looking into the complaints that are being made about the California-based ticketing company.
"Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is concerned about consumer complaints related to @Ticketmaster’s pre-sale of @taylorswift13 concert tickets. He and his Consumer Protection team will use every available tool to ensure that no consumer protection laws were violated," the official account for the state's team tweeted.
Taylor Swift herself has not yet spoken out about the ongoing scandal, but with the Eras tour set to commence in March 2023, we're hoping everything gets sorted out and her fans get to experience this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
