Lucky Taylor Swift fans have bagged tickets for the first UK dates of the star's highly-anticipated Eras Tour.
The singer will bring her bumper three-hour-long celebration of all 10 of her studio albums to London, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Cardiff as part of the European leg of her tour in June and August next year.
Tickets for the 13 UK dates announced so far are proving to be tricky to get hold of. So far, just the fans with presale access - handed out only to people who pre-ordered Midnights before its release last year - have been in with a chance.
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To try and control access to the ticket sites, sellers Ticketmaster and AXS are staggering the ticket presales with different shows going on sale at different times over the next few days.
On Monday morning at 11am, presale tickets for Taylor's show in London on June 21 and Edinburgh on June 7 went on sale, with tens of thousands of fans joining virtual queues hoping to get their hands on them. At 1pm, another batch of tickets for shows on August 15 and June 8 went on sale, while tickets for the final Edinburgh date on June 9 were released at 3pm.
Only a lucky few were successful in Monday's presales and thousands more will be hoping to bag the hot tickets in the additional presales coming up on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday will see all three Liverpool shows go on presale as well as two more London shows.
Once the presales are over this week, fans who pre-registered for access to the general sale will be given a chance to get tickets starting from Monday next week.
The three presales that took place on Monday were the first of nine in total for the UK dates. Now that the first day of action is over and done with there are several things that we've learnt - including how to get in the waiting room, how the virtual queue works and, perhaps most importantly, how much tickets will set you back.
Here are five things we learnt from today's race for tickets that should help you bag your tickets.
You have to log in to join the waiting room
Only two ticket outlets are selling tickets to the Eras Tour UK dates and they are Ticketmaster and AXS.
Everyone who signed up for the Midnights presale will have been sent a code that can only be used on one of these sites - so it's important you're on the right one otherwise it won't work.
Before trying to get tickets, you should have created an account for the ticket site that you need to use.
Half an hour before the sale starts a virtual waiting room will open up. If you're in the waiting room ahead of the ticket sale start time, you will be randomly assigned a place in the queue once the ticket sale starts - so this means that if you're first in the waiting room, you won't necessarily be first in the queue.
To access the waiting room you need to be logged into your Ticketmaster or AXS account first. Only people who are signed in and have access to the presale will be allowed to enter the waiting room.
You won't necessarily know what number you are in the queue
Once you're out of the waiting room and into the queue, the ticket-buying process for AXS and Ticketmaster is basically the same - but there is a key difference.
If you are in the Ticketmaster queue you will be told the number of people ahead of you in the queue and you'll be able to work out how likely you are to get tickets. Someone who just has a hundred or so people in front of them is much more likely to get through to buy tickets than someone who has a few thousand in front of them. That being said, we don't know how many tickets are up for grabs in each sale - so we can't predict how many people from the queue will reach the ticket page.
If you are buying tickets through AXS you will also be put in a virtual queue. However, unlike Ticketmaster, you will not be told how many people are ahead of you. What you will see is a bar at the bottom of the page predicting your place in the queue - but you won't be assigned a number.
You can get kicked out of the queue for various reasons
Some fans trying for tickets this morning complained that they had been kicked out of the queue after reaching the ticket page before then being placed back in it with thousands of people ahead of them.
Heartbroken fans posted photos to Twitter showing a Ticketmaster error message that appeared on the page at the point they tried to make their purchase.
The message reads: "Your place in the queue is no longer valid. We apologise but an error has occurred. In just a moment you'll be automatically redirected to rejoin the queue." It then goes on to list "possible actions that may have caused this error", which include:
- Too many browser windows or tabs open
- You are no longer signed into your account
- The event page was refreshed while you were shopping for tickets
- The Captcha verification was not completed in time
With that in mind, once you are in the queue you'll want to refrain from hitting refresh or opening up another tab to try and join the queue again. Make sure you are logged in to your account and keep the queue page open until you are automatically put through to the purchase page.
The seating plans have been revealed
We now know the layout for Wembley Stadium in London and BT Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh as the seating plans have been released by Ticketmaster. It could prove useful to have a look at it before you purchase tickets so you can scout out where you want to be.
Although we haven't seen the seating plan for Anfield, it will likely look similar.
There will be a mix of standing and seated tickets available in each venue. Here's the layout for Edinburgh:
We can also see that the stage for Taylor's performance will be the same as it has been during the US dates. The large main stage at the front of the venue extends out into the crowd forming a catwalk, with a diamond-shaped platform in the middle and a smaller rectangular performance area right at the end. This means even the Swifties at the back of the venue should get a good view of her.
However, some seats are likely to be behind the stage with a restricted view. Some fans took to Twitter after Monday's sales to complain that they had forked out hundreds of pounds on tickets only to later realise that their seats were in blocks behind the stage.
There's a huge range of tickets and prices to choose from
Now that the first tickets have gone on sale we can finally see how much a place inside the stadium will set fans back. Spoiler alert - most of them aren't cheap.
Price lists for the London Wembley show have been shared on social media. Those who want to get as close to Taylor as possible will be after standing tickets at the left and right of the stage - they will set you back £172.25 each. General admission standing, which is further back, is priced at £110.40.
Seated tickets can be cheaper with prices starting at £58.65. The better the seats the more you pay and the most expensive ones are priced at £194.75 each.
However, some fans buying tickets on Monday were left confused about the options available to them. Instead of being able to pick their seats on a seating plan at the checkout, buyers instead had to choose the price level of the seats they wanted to purchase. The ticket outlet then assigned them to a section and they could either confirm their purchase or try again for different seats. It means that some fans ended up buying tickets without actually knowing where in the stadium they would be seated. If you want to know ahead of buying your tickets, you can look at the venue's own seating plan to work out where the allocated seats are.
Those wanting the VIP treatment will have to fork out even more than the standard prices. The Its Been A Long Time Coming Package comes in at a staggering £662.40 each, while Karma Is My Boyfriend is priced at £387.40 and I Remember It All Too Well Package at £332.40.
Tickets for the Edinburgh show were similarly priced but slightly cheaper. Left and right front standing tickets are priced at £171.25 and seated tickets range from £86.90 to £182.50. That means we can expect Liverpool tickets to be a similar price.
You can see the full round up of prices here.
