Ticketmaster and The Eras Tour Crisis
On November 1st, 2022, Taylor Swift announced her Eras Tour on Good Morning America and all social media accounts. This was her sixth concert tour and fans were prepared to go to war for these tickets since she hadn’t performed since 2018. Taylor defined the Eras Tour as a musical journey through all her albums. Attending this tour was a fan’s dream. At first, she announced 27 shows across 20 US cities in the biggest stadiums, but due to popular demand, she added 8 more shows. Once these shows were announced, fans at once signed up to get approved for the verified pre-sale code that would allow them to get tickets in the pre-sale. Ticket sales were held by Ticketmaster. Fans were to list three shows they wanted to attend and to put them in order. About 1.5 million people were approved for the pre-sale code, and 14 million eventually joined the sale which was not intended. Once the day came for the pre-sale to start, Ticketmaster had other plans for the Swifties. On November 15th, the verified fan sale began, and things went south very quickly. Fans were sitting in up to 12-hour-long queues, patiently waiting to purchase tickets to see their idol. After the failure of the pre-sale tickets for the verified fans, Ticketmaster ended up canceling the general sale for tickets which upset fans even more. Ticketmaster explained this because of “extraordinarily high demand” and “insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”
While ticket sales were launching, many people realized that their code was not working, or they were sitting in 12-hour-long queues. Ticketmaster eventually glitched out and was not expecting such a huge rush of ticket sales. Ticketmaster had the most people on their website they had in a while. “I tried in total of 41 times that first day to get tickets. It kicks you out into the queue and you are back in and then I kept getting errors,” Barfuss told CNN. “Then, I again spent a couple of hours trying to do it the second day. When I finally got in and was going to buy tickets, they were like $1400.” (CNN, 2022). Many of her fans were distraught and blamed Ticketmaster for doing so horribly in the ticket rollout. Many of the tickets had been bought by bots and scalpers throughout the verified fan pre-sale. So, a lot of the tickets were gone and were being sold for a much larger price than before. This did not really pose a financial problem for the company, but more of a reputational problem. Ticketmaster is known for not having the best ticket rollouts, but this one was the worst. Ticketmaster took a huge hit on Twitter for having a “Bad Reputation.” Many customers did not feel safe using the website anymore for any future ticket sales. They had felt like they were being lied to and being promised tickets when Ticketmaster could not supply them.
This crisis was an external crisis. It affected Taylor Swift fans who were promised tickets. Many of her fans were not able to attend the concert due to the ticket shortage caused by Ticketmaster. While the queue times were long, once you were out of the queue Ticketmaster would kick you out once you got to the beginning of the line. People were being sent left and right while trying to buy these tickets because of how non-prepared Ticketmaster was. This crisis was intentional and unintentional. It was unintentional because Ticketmaster did state that they were not expecting the overflow of ticket sales due to the short amount of verified pre-sale codes they gave out. In one of their statements, they said “Historically, we have been able to manage huge volume coming into the site to shop for tickets, so those with Verified Fan codes have a smooth shopping process. However, this time the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who did not have codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak.” (Ticketmaster, 2022). Fans struggle constantly using Ticketmaster, it is an ongoing system of customers trying to buy tickets and either getting scammed or turned away. Ticketmaster is always driving up their prices in fees as well. The Hustle took a survey of 606 people and asked them if they thought Ticketmaster added too many fees and 99.2% of surveyors said yes. The Hustle then analyzed recent ticket prices (including The Eras Tour) and found that 28% of the ticket sale is a Ticketmaster fee. (Dent,2022) This is another reason Swift fans were hesitant and distraught to buy the overpriced tickets for The Eras Tour.
In response to the crisis that Ticketmaster had on November 15th, they made a statement on their website on November 19th, 2022. This was 4 days after the verified pre-sale fiasco, and shortly after they canceled general sale tickets. Ticketmaster first apologized to Taylor Swift and all her fans and then said that they knew a record number of fans wanted to attend the tour. In their response, they also said 3.5 million people signed up for the verified pre-sale, but only 1.5 million were sent the codes. (Ticketmaster, 2022) They knew that their website was going to crash. In the rest of the statement, they just mentioned how it was record-breaking sales for any artist. The organization did not act ethically during the crisis. Ticketmaster apologized with two lines after the crisis had happened 4 days before. Then they continued to talk about how the ticket sales were record-breaking, which had nothing to do with the disappointed fans who were promised tickets. Even before they posted the statement on their website, they first published a tweet on Ticketmaster's account the night before, then quickly removed it. The tweet was “We strive to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets for Taylor Swift ‘The Eras’ Tour. First, we want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets.” (William, 2022) Ticketmaster could have handled the response to the crisis in a few better ways. They could have been more transparent and had better communication. They canceled the general sale, but never updated fans as to why the queue times were so long or why they were being kicked out of the sale. Ticketmaster lacked accountability in the uproar they caused among the Swifties. They also could have had a quicker response to the crisis. For three days there was a blank space. While they made a lengthy statement on their website, it almost seemed a “little too late.”
References:
Dent, M. (2023). Retrieved from https://thehustle.co/the-sneaky-economics-of-ticketmaster/
Ticketmaster. (2023). Retrieved from https://business.ticketmaster.com/business-solutions/taylor-swift-the-eras-tour-onsale-explained/
Willman, C. (2022). Retrieved from https://variety.com/2022/music/news/ticketmaster-apologizes-taylor-swift-fans-ticketing-sales-live-nation-1235437555/
I knew the Era’s Tour had a fair bit of controversy surrounding it, but I was unaware of the role Ticket Master played.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like the Ticket Master’s crisis management plan was half-baked and lacked much, if any, empathy concerning the affected fans. Ticket Master should have handled this ticket sale like they have handled the many other “large volume” sales they’ve conducted in the past, especially given the build-up and high interest in Taylor’s tour.
All too often online retailers fall back on the same excuses for similar controversies, appearing to play dumb. Companies like Ticket Master seem to act irresponsibly and unprofessionally when they see themselves as a dominant presence in their market. It’s hard to give these companies the benefit of the doubt when they respond to a crisis in the way it seems Ticket Master has done here.
Unfortunately, so many were affected with little recourse as Ticket Master will retain its position as the main source for online ticket sales for the foreseeable future.