By the numbers: Ticketmaster sold more than 2 million tickets during the first day of its presale event on Nov. 15, the most ever sold for an artist in a single day. The ticketing company said it was left with "insufficient remaining ticket inventory" to meet the demand for a public sale.
How To Buy Taylor Swift Presale Tickets
The presale for "verified" fans on Tuesday was only supposed to accommodate 1.5 million people. However, the chairman of Live Nation Greg Maffei on Thursday said during an appearance on CNBC's Squawk on the Street that 14 million people attempted to purchase tickets on Tuesday.
Given the numbers cited of 2.4 million people buying tickets of the 14 million who reportedly tried to get them, the odds of success were less than 20 percent for those who attempted to participate in the presale.
In a less grim statistics comparison, incumbent members of the U.S. House of Representatives running to hold on to their seats had a reelection rate this year of 94.5 percent, according to Open Secrets. Which means those members of Congress had a much higher chance of winning their races than Swift fans did of getting presale tickets.
In a blog post on Thursday, which was later removed from its website, Ticketmaster said that a "record number of fans" wanted to buy tickets to Swift's Eras Tour and that the presale events that occurred Tuesday and Wednesday overwhelmed the website. (Ticketmaster didn't immediately respond to questions about why the blog post was removed.)
Further, Capital One, who also planned to release tickets to cardholders only, rescheduled its presale to Nov. 16 at 2 p.m. local venue time. All presale codes and links sent via text will still work at that time, according to Ticketmaster.
To give yourself the best chance possible to get those seats, you need to do some planning in advance (i.e., now). You'll want to register for Verified Fan, a program started by Ticketmaster, intended to weed out bots and get tickets into the hands of real people. It's free and quick to sign up. It's meant to prevent resellers from competing with actual fans for tickets, and there are often Verified Fan presales, which mean tickets are available to those registered ahead of the general public.
If you miss out on tickets in presales or general sales or shows sell out (which they're almost certain to do), some tickets will end up on resellers, including Vivid Seats and StubHub. The disadvantage of resellers is that the prices are often jacked up above face value. Some of my friends recommend waiting until the last minute when sellers are more likely to "dump" their unsold seats before a concert, but this advice may not apply to big ticket shows like this tour.
I didn't get Swift tickets while in the air. Like thousands of others, I got stuck in a virtual waiting room after spending much of my flight anticipating a scheduled presale that was hopelessly delayed. But eventually it did start. We had landed at our destination by then, a family vacation. My kid was playing at the hotel arcade with his uncle, and I had had one cocktail when I decided to try again. I logged into the presale and this time I got through. I got seats . . . and lost them. I got seats again, and this time they went through.
Many fans sat in the Ticketmaster queue for hours waiting to get Swift tickets. The ticket-selling site paused the Central Standard Time queues, delayed the West Coast times and pushed the Capital One presale to Wednesday to accommodate the demand.
Some fans shopping during presale who waited in the online queue for hours were able to get tickets, while others report making it to the ticket-buying portion of the website and having it freeze and kick them out.
For fans who didn't get a presale code, don't have a Capitol One credit card, or didn't have any luck during the first two presales, tickets go on sale to the general public Friday at 10 a.m. But don't count yourself out just yet.
Those lucky enough to get a presale code from Ticketmaster had access to tickets the morning of Nov. 15. Capital One credit card holders got access a few hours later, and the general public gets access a few days later on Friday, Nov. 18.
According to a study by the Fan Freedom Project, Taylor Swift held roughly 47% of her tickets for preferred credit card holders and fan presales for a 2009 show in Nashville. Applying that 47%, 1.3 million tickets will be available in presale for The Eras Tour.
And while, theoretically, fans should be able to quickly secure their tickets and get on with their days, the reality is that the presale process has been painful, with many stuck waiting on Ticketmaster for upward of an hour in queues.
Taylor Swift's widely anticipated "Eras" tour opened for "Verified Fan" presale Tuesday morning, allowing those who had been qualified and selected to purchase tickets. Fans signed up almost a week in advance for a chance to access tickets to the Denver show at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Lynn joined the queue for tickets 15 minutes before the presale began, entering a queue with 20,000 people in front of her, she said, and waited all day before finally getting kicked out of the system.
First, Lynn said, the system froze for hours. Then, she waited even longer in the queue before getting access to seat selection. When she tried to purchase the tickets, the site booted her out. When she tried again, the show was sold out of presale tickets.
"I have now been 'in line' on @Ticketmaster for over 4 hours just for the privilege of registering to buy @taylorswift13 tickets. Not even but the tickets, mind you, just register to buy them. How can this company be so consistently awful, yet still exist?," tweeted another Swift devotee.
General sales for tickets to the Gillette shows were supposed to begin on November 18 at 10am. But as of right now, Ticketmaster has canceled the general sale, due to an overwhelming response to the presale. If they become available pick them up here!.
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