Swifties Fume as Ticketmaster Crashes Again and Postpones Ticket Sales in France Amid Huge Demand
Ticketmaster paused sales on Tuesday (July 11, 2023) for tickets to several Taylor Swift show dates in France for the second installment of the singer's The Eras Tour. This is the second time that the ticket-selling platform faced challenges while trying to sell the pop star's concert tickets.
Ticketmaster France announced on Twitter that tickets for the La Defense Atrna in Paris and also Groupama Stadium in Lyon Have been put on hold, assuring Swifties that an update will soon follow. The tickets were supposed to go on sale in two installments, one at 9 a.m. and the second at 11 a.m., local time. The Ticketmaster site however struggled with the demand and decided to postpone the ticket sales, before things went south.
"This morning's sale was disrupted by an issue with a third-party vendor who is working to resolve the issue as soon as possible," the tweet read. "As soon as we saw fans experiencing issues, queues were paused. All codes that were not used to purchase tickets today will remain valid," the statement continued.
La mise en vente Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour de 9h et 11h pour Paris La Défense Arena a été mise en pause. Nous vous tiendrons au courant avec une nouvelle heure de mise en vente dès que possible. Tous les codes non déjà utilisés resteront valables.
— Ticketmaster.fr (@TicketmasterFR) July 11, 2023
The tickets went on sale starting July 11 but soon were paused after the platform was overwhelmed with the amount of traffic on the website. The pause comes a month after Swifties filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. Why? Let's find out.
Is this the first time? Not at all!
Swifties had successfully crashed the ticket-selling platform back in November 2022 when the pre-sale for The Eras Tour opened. However, things didn't go as smoothly as expected. Many people complained that they were blocked from obtaining the tickets from the website. One user wrote, "I had 6 minutes to pay after picking random tickets to just have them. I tried to pay. Unable to process the request and completely kicked out and had to start over. I am so beyond heartbroken because I don’t know what availability is going to look like or the prices."
Another wrote about how she wasted a lot of time just to be told that her code didn't work. This created a buzz at the time as many Swifties took to social media to talk about how they moved their schedule just to make sure they were free during the pre-sale.
I wasted an hour and a half of my life only to be told my code didn’t work. This is ridiculous. You guys messed up and you suck. Told us not to use our phone to login then switched it. Now I’m back to the end of the queue after waiting an hour and a half.
— LGEV (@LDG1222) November 15, 2022
In response to the situation, the ticket-selling site wrote, "There has been historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up to buy tickets for the TaylorSwiftTix Presale."
taylor swift performing for an empty stadium in paris 2024 since no one was able to log into ticketmaster and buy tickets
— noé 🧛🏼♀️ GOT ERAS TICKETS (@mysticalsgold) July 11, 2023
Ticketmaster apologized, following the November fiasco
A week after the crash, Ticketmaster apologized to both Swift and her fans. "We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans — especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets,” the platform wrote in a blog post. They also promised to make the procedure of buying tickets as easy as possible but it seems that they are not keeping promises. At that time, the company stated that it was trying to "shore up" the tech, and once they had the tech in place, there would be no such problems.
Taylor Swift's reaction
Taylor Swift was not on Ticket Master's side when the whole ticket debacle happened. She made it very clear that the platform was aware that the demand was going to be insane, adding that she was assured that they could handle it. "I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could," she wrote.
Swift hoped that there will be more opportunities for people who didn't get the tickets. "My hope is to provide more opportunities for us to get together and sing these songs," she added.