Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift announced a long-awaited stadium tour on November 1, 2022. Since her last tour for her sixth album Reputation in 2018, she has released four more albums in four years- Lover, folklore, evermore, and Midnights– as well as two re-records of her second and fourth albums Fearless and Red, making her the most active musician in today’s world. 

Not having heard a majority of these brand-new songs live, her fans were elated to hear of news of Swift’s “The Eras Tour” which will supposedly hit a few performances that align with each of her 10 albums. However, the news caused fear among the “swifties”; fans since her debut album in 2006 were terrified of losing tickets to people who just recently deemed her worth seeing, as she gained a huge following the past few years, even after the 2016 feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian that caused her to (wrongfully) lose supporters.

Tickets were sold through the infamous Ticketmaster, a site alright for smaller shows but unequipped for regulating a sale like this one. The company claims to prevent purchases from bots so that resales are less likely to happen, but that is exactly the opposite of what happened once Swift’s tickets were available for “presale.”

Super Fans were able to sign up to have a chance of getting a code texted to them ensuring they could get tickets three days earlier than the general sale date. But Ticketmaster mistakenly sent out enough codes so that the amount of people waiting in the queue could fill 900 stadiums with the singer, when in 2023 she is only performing at 62.

Tons of fans didn’t get tickets, and tons of bots were able to purchase tickets for astronomical resale prices reaching up to $100,000. Tennessee and North Carolina state governors are looking into the issues with Ticketmaster and Swift posted a statement promising new opportunities for the people who didn’t get tickets.