The singer called the ticketing woes for her upcoming 'Eras Tour' 'excruciating.'
Taylor Swift is as upset about ticketing issues as her fans. After Ticketmaster made headlines for a series of technical difficulties during the presale for Swift's upcoming Eras Tour, the 32-year-old singer took to her Instagram Story to address the situation.
"Well. It goes without saying that I'm extremely protective of my fans," she wrote. "We've been doing this for decades together and over the years, I've brought so many elements of my career in house. I've done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans' experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do."
"It's really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties," Swift continued, "and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse."
Swift noted that "there are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I'm trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward."
"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. "It's truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them."
Swift wrapped up her lengthy statement by addressing the many fans who were unable to nab tickets, writing, "All I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and singe these songs."
"Thank you for wanting to be there," she concluded. "You have no idea how much that means."
According to Ticketmaster, a record-breaking 3.5 million fans preregistered for Swift's Verified Fan presale earlier this week.
About half of those fans were able to score a code to purchase tickets, but when they logged on Tuesday, many were met with technical difficulties and unable to do so. The company admitted that about "15 percent of interactions across the site experienced issues."
Ticketmaster responded to fans' frustrations later that day, citing "unprecedented demand" from "millions" of people. The company also delayed the West Coast onsales and pushed the Capital One presale to Wednesday in response to the technical problems.
Then, on Thursday, Ticketmaster announced that the general sale for The Eras Tour, which was scheduled to begin on Friday, was canceled.
"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," the company tweeted.
As for fans that were left empty-handed, Ticketmaster said, "Based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)…that's a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years."
"While it's impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows," the company said, "we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we're focused on."
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