The Eras Tour: Information and Controversy
Taylor Swift announced “The Eras Tour” on November 1st. When announced, the tour originally had twenty-eight tour dates, but after the high demand to add more dates, Taylor’s team added many more, fifty-one dates in total. Most cities have three shows per city which is difficult to do, especially for a stadium tour because blocking out the dates and putting on a show with many lights and stage directions isn't easy.
The nine openers are Paramore, Gracie Abrams, beabadoobee, Phoebe Bridgers, GAYLE, OWENN, MUNA, girl in red, and HAIM. There are two openers per date, and the swifties are excited because these openers are some of their favorite artists too. Their genres vary and they are popular enough that many swifties (Taylor’s fandom) listen to them.
The tour is one of the biggest tours in history selling over two million tickets only on the first day of the “Verified Fan Presale.” The day after, Ticketmaster had to cancel the general/public sale. This caused tons of commotion and anger because Taylor Swift is one of the biggest artists in the world, meaning she has millions of fans. Many fans couldn't even get to participate in the presales because they either never got selected for the Verified Fan Presale or they didn't have a Capital One card. The stadiums in total could sell around 2.6-2.8 million tickets. This means that if around 2.4 million tickets have already been sold, the general public sale (which is supposed to be the biggest sale) will only be able to sell around 200,000-400,000 tickets, leaving there to be an average of 3,000 tickets per show. However, those few thousand tickets have probably already been sold to organizations and companies to give to their employees.
To start with the controversy, twenty-six fans are suing Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster has been accused of violating the California Cartwright Act and the California Unfair Competition Law because of how the “Verified Fan Presale'' went on November 15th. The people suing are asking for $2,500 for each violation. Ticketmaster is also being accused of fraud, scalping (overpricing tickets), “intentionally and purposefully mislead[ing] ticket purchasers by allowing scalpers and bots access to TaylorSwiftTix presale.” Ticketmaster’s response to this accusation is how they weren't expecting this “unprecedented” experience. They had never seen that amount of people on Ticketmaster at once. The fans accused them of intentionally giving out presale codes so that the ticket demand would increase.
Overall, many devoted fans may never get the chance to go. Ticketmaster is getting themself into some trouble and it’s unsure what’s going to happen with them. In the end, The Taylor Swift “Eras Tour” has already made history and it’s going to make even more in the future.
By Marco Schittone