Taylor Swift Doesn’t Mince Words in Statement About Ticketmaster Fiasco

Taylor Swift is just as upset as fans following the botched presale for her upcoming The Eras tour. A day after Tickmaster announced that public on-sale was canceled due to “high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory,” and after fans complained od hours-long queues and errors during the presale period, Swift broke her silence Friday morning, and she didn’t hold back, calling the ordeal “excruciating.”

Swift addressed the outrage in a message to her heartbroken fanbase on her Instagram Story, writing, “it goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans.” The “Anti-Hero” songstress, who has a notably close relationship with her fans, continued, “it’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.” Although she didn’t drop names, she heavily alluded to Ticketmaster as she wrote, “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.”

Ticketmaster has been the center of controversy — and is even the subject of multiple investigations — ever since presale opened up for Verified Fans on Tuesday. According to a previous statement released by the company, more than 3.5 million fans pre-registered for the pre-sale, with 1.5 million receiving pre-sale codes while the other 2 million were waitlisted. When presale opened, “the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak.” This resulted in some fans waiting in the queue for more than five hours, with many reporting that when they finally made it through to ticket selection, they were unable to place their purchase due to various errors.

In her Friday statement, Swift offered some hope for those who were unable to get tickets for the upcoming tour, writing, “My hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs.” She did not say what those opportunities may be, though the singer is known for hosting smaller, more intimate gatherings with fans and also recording her tours for future streaming. She ended the message by writing, “Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”