Ticketmaster keeps making Eras Tour enemies – but so are resellers
West Hollywood, California - It's been roughly half a year since Ticketmaster fumbled Taylor Swift's presale for The Eras Tour. But the ticketing company is still wreaking havoc on live entertainment fans left and right – and ticket resellers have joined the battle.
Concertgoers and live entertainment lovers have been waging a war against Ticketmaster for decades.
But the fight took a new form after Taylor Swift's ticketing fiasco during The Eras Tour presale, thanks to Ticketmaster's website crashing numerous times and seemingly reserving a large portion of tickets for scalpers.
Though a chunk of Swifties made it out of what's been dubbed "The Great (Eras) War" with tickets, others were left with broken hearts.
While Ticketmaster later opted to release various tickets the week before Swift's tour hits a select city, giving fans a second chance to score tickets, many have posted on social media about their experience being booted from the queue, mistaken for bots on their home computers, or making it to the payment processing page, only for an error message to pop up moments later – allowing the tickets to be secured by a scalper and reposted on a reseller website for 5x the ticket's face value.
Because of Ticketmaster's ongoing ticketing shenanigans – with The Eras Tour and every other live entertainment event they sell tickets for – many fans have been forced to scout out tickets on various reseller sites, such as StubHub, Open Seats, and Yapsody.
However, this can sometimes be a slippery slope, and fans are quite literally paying a hefty price because of it.
Concertgoers battle resellers due to Ticketmaster's poor practices
Most concertgoers are aware there's a risk involved when dealing with ticket resellers. However, if there's a must-see show coming to an area near them, like The Eras Tour, fans are going to do whatever they can to safely secure some tickets.
After missing out on tickets during the now-infamous Eras Tour presale on Ticketmaster, Nicole Sourek joined numerous different Taylor Swift ticket groups on social media in hopes of getting tickets for herself and her daughters to attend The Eras Tour in Chicago. There, she came across an ad for the ticket reselling platform Yapsody.
Before aimlessly buying tickets from a relatively unknown reselling site, Nicole says she researched the company, read reviews, and found them on the Better Business Bureau, and everything seemed to check out.
"I felt like I did my due diligence as someone in the market looking for tickets like this," she told TAG24. Like many, attending a Taylor Swift show is anything but meaningless for Nicole and her daughters, who she says became massive fans of the Lavender Haze singer after attending her Reputation Stadium Tour.
So, when she thought she had secured tickets to The Eras Tour in Chicago through a ticket reseller on Yapsody, she was understandably excited. That is, until she found herself out $1,600 without any legitimate tickets to her name.
She realized something was wrong once she was sent a few tickets after doing her best to ensure It wasn't a scam. However, once she received them, she wasn't able to add them to her phone's digital wallet.
Once the Yapsody seller sent the tickets again and she took a closer look, she realized the tickets were in the same section and row as the ones she purchased, but for a show in an entirely different city.
Ticketmaster's dominance of the ticketing market is anything but fan-first
When Nicole asked the seller to send her the Chicago Eras Tour tickets she purchased and paid for, the Yapsody reseller told her that wasn't possible. After countless efforts to get through to Yapsody's customer service, once Nicole finally did, they informed her there was essentially nothing they could do, as the reseller's account had been suspended.
Given Yapsody's unwillingness to help Nicole get her money back or secure the tickets she paid for, she opted to take things to the next level by filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over the transaction.
While Ticketmaster has taken to social media to warn fans against buying tickets from resellers, the ticketing company itself may be to blame.
When concertgoers and other live entertainment fans are stripped of the ability to gain fair access to tickets because Ticketmaster has monopolized the market while reportedly reserving 90% of tickets for ticket brokers, radio stations, credit card companies, and more, it leaves them no choice but to utilize the secondhand ticket market.
Lest we forget the ludicrous service fees many ticketing companies tack on to US ticket sales, it's a wonder how any ticketing company – not just Ticketmaster – has been getting away with such questionable practices.
Luckily, fans getting tickets to The Eras Tour shows in Argentina and Brazil don't have to deal with Ticketmaster, as their ticket sales are through AllAcess and Tickets for Fun.
Cover photo: Collage: IMAGO / imagebroker / KEVIN WINTER / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP