Taylor Swift accepts an award on stage during the 2022 MTV Europe Music Awards on November 13, 2022 in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Kevin Mazur | Wireframe image | Getty Images
Taylor Swift fans don’t have a “love affair” with Ticketmaster – and can fall victim to scams if they’re not careful when shopping for affordable concert tickets.
Ticketmaster announced on Thursday afternoon that it has canceled public ticket sales plans for the pop star’s upcoming “The Eras Tour,” her first since 2018. “Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient ticket inventory remaining to meet this demand, the public tomorrow for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been canceled,” the site said in a tweet.
Tickets were to go on sale to the general public on Friday, November 18 at 10:00 a.m. ET.
Fans accessed Taylor Swift tickets this week via a pre-sale offer for Capital One cardholders; these tickets are no longer available.
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In the absence of more tickets being made available to the general public later on, fans may find it necessary to turn to the “secondary” market to score a seat – i.e. from sellers other than Ticketmaster. But that market could be full of landmines for unwary buyers, experts said.
“If you’re in a rush trying to get your tickets – which of course you’re going to be because of demand – it’s very easy to make a quick mistake,” said Chris Cobb, owner of historic rock club Exit. / In. in Nashville, Tennessee.
Swifties, as the artist’s hardcore fans are called, flooded the internet this week to buy presale tickets for “eras”.
The flood temporarily crashed the Ticketmaster site Tuesday and fed hours of waiting to buy tickets. The chaos led to calls from United States Senators and Tennessee Attorney General for inquiries about the ticket seller market power and sales practices.
Ticketmaster on Tuesday called the request “historically unprecedented.” The 2023 tourwhich has 52 dates to date, sold over 2 million tickets that day – a single-day record.
Offers for hot tickets, you are practically not going to find one.
Andrew Farwell
Vice President of Outback Presents
Meanwhile, tickets have skyrocketed on the resale market — exceeding $10,000 in some cases, through ticketing sites like StubHub. These are asking prices, not necessarily what fans pay to score a seat.
Amid all the hubbub – and the ticket craze – desperate fans may be thrilled to stumble upon what looks like a bargain. However, it could actually be a fraud.
“Offers for hot tickets, you hardly find any,” said Andrew Farwell, vice president of Outback Presents, a Nashville-based independent concert promoter. “It’s capitalism at its best, supply and demand.
“It’s both the ultimate dream and nightmare,” added Farwell, referring to the high demand for live events after the pandemic-era lull.
Why concert tickets are a “savvy buyer” market
Some Taylor Swift fans who bought seemingly legit tickets have already discovered they were duped.
Buying tickets on the “secondary market” poses a high risk of fraud and/or exorbitant prices for consumers, entertainment industry experts have warned.
Ticketmaster is the “main” seller of the Taylor Swift Tour, for example. Event tickets that appear on a primary seller’s site are those that are sold for the first time and at face value (i.e. the price printed on the ticket).
Secondary sellers often buy tickets from main wholesale sellers with the help of “bots” and then resell them at a higher price, a practice known as ticketing”boasting.”
“There are almost as many [secondary sellers] that you just can’t keep up with,” Cobb said.
A big concern for consumers: The secondary market has seen an “increase in fraudulent, unethical and illegal activities” such as ticket scalping and ticket solicitation, according at Technavio, a market researcher. The company estimates that the global secondary market share will reach $2.2 billion by 2026, representing a growth rate of approximately 8% per year; 44% of revenue growth is expected to come from North America.
Of course, that’s not to say that secondary sellers are scammers under all circumstances. But it’s becoming a “buyer beware” market, experts said.
Exit/In recently held a string of sold-out shows — and had to turn bands away each night, Cobb said. They had inadvertently purchased counterfeit notes.
Sometimes this can happen if a reseller sells multiples of the same ticket; only the initially scanned ticket will work at the gate. In other cases, a reseller may sell you tickets that they haven’t even secured yet.
It’s easy to see why consumers are confused: Google results for “Taylor Swift concert tickets” on Thursday afternoon showed ads for StubHub and Vivid Seats – two secondary sellers – ahead of those for Ticketmaster and the Taylor Swift’s own website. And it may not be clear how to differentiate the two groups.
How to Buy Legit Concert Tickets
The question for consumers becomes whether they are making a mistake before buying.
There’s a sure-fire way when buying online, experts said: First, go to an artist’s or event venue’s website and click from there to get tickets. This will take you to the main seller page.
Before you buy, do one last check of the website URL domain name — to make sure you’re buying from “ticketmaster.com” and not “ticketfaster.com,” for example, Cobb said.
Of course, it’s possible that a given show might sell out or face value tickets might be priced higher than predicted through Ticketmaster when fans go shopping.
“When there are just no tickets available, I understand that fans want to see a show, but they run the risk of paying too much or running into fake tickets, scammers,” said Tim Gray, CEO of Grayscale Marketing and Vice President of Marketing for Romeo Entertainment Group. , talent buyer and concert promoter.
Social media is another potential landmine for fans, Gray said. Since the pandemic, he’s seen a “gargantuan, absurd, crazy amount” of fraud through Facebook and other platforms.
In these cases, a bot (which may even impersonate someone you know) may trick you into clicking on a fake link to a live stream of a sold-out concert, or tell you that it doesn’t. can no longer use the event tickets he has purchased. These are often attempts to steal your personal information or your credit card number, Gray said.
If you’re in a rush trying to get your tickets – which of course you’re going to be because of demand – it’s very easy to make a quick mistake.
Chris Cobb
output/input owner
It encourages fans who buy tickets this way to click on the social media profile in question and look for potential red flags, such as very few previous posts, indicating that the account has probably just been created. Fans can also do a Google search on the seller’s consumer reviews, which may indicate if others have been scammed.
It’s likely that even legitimate Taylor Swift tickets purchased on the secondary market will see prices drop significantly from current levels after initial demand subsides, experts said.
“A broker fishes to see what he can get,” Cobb said. “These numbers will continue to drop once all these false claims are gone and there is a correction.”