Last year, thousands faced disaster when trying to buy tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in the US. Fans said the presale access codes they were given didn’t work properly and the Ticketmaster website crashed repeatedly. As a result, the main sale was cancelled and a group of fans filed a lawsuit accusing the company of fraud, price-fixing and anti-trust violations. “We need to do better and we will,” said Joe Berchtold, president of Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation.
In the UK and Europe this month, presales for various dates and locations opened at different times and different days, to try and avoid the same issues – but fans have found the process stressful and unpredictable. We spoke to some of them about the difficulty of buying Swift tickets, and to people across the industry about how the ticketing system can be improved.
