Taylor Swift Finally Addresses Tickets Disaster: ‘Thank You for Wanting to Be There’

"I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” Swift wrote on Instagram to the fans who got screwed over by Ticketmaster. Hm.

By Lauren Tousignant | November 18, 2022 | 6:55pm

Entertainment

Taylor Swift Finally Addresses Tickets Disaster: ‘Thank You for Wanting to Be There’

It’s been a long week for Swifites, and the 1989-born cat mom has finally spoken. After Ticketmaster fucked us all over, fucked us all over again, and then again, Taylor Swift posted an Instagram story on Friday to basically say: Erm, welp.

“Well. It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” she wrote. “We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do.” I don’t know exactly what type of statement I expected Swift to make, but I didn’t love being reminded that she does things herself because she’s well aware that everyone else sucks. She added that watching the fiasco this week was “excruciating,” since mistakes were made “with no recourse.” (Antitrust mastermind? Just kidding.)

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On Thursday, Ticketmaster said that 3.5 million fans signed up for the Verified Fan presale, 1.5 million were invited, and 14 million showed up. (The blog post has since been deleted.) And on Friday, the New York Times reported that the Justice Department has officially opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment—the name of the company after Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2009.

“There are a multitude of reasons why people such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” she continued. “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.”

I’m glad she said something, though I wish it was a little less underwhelming and a little more, “Music should be free and I’ll give you all free tickets.” But alas, capitalism wins again. Ideally, would have loved it if she pulled an Ed Sheeran (notably her BFF) and canceled resale tickets. In 2018, Sheeran canceled over 10,000 tickets for his stadium tour, requiring IDs to ensure that fans got tickets and not resale bots.

Sure, people can only do so much, but Taylor Swift can also pretty much do anything so, I don’t know, whatever.

“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets,” Tay said, in a nice, subtle flex, “but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.” Personally, failing to get a ticket felt less like surviving a bear attack and more like being fucked over by a massive entertainment monopoly for profit. But Swift’s the Grammy-winning wordsmith, here, so maybe I’m wrong.

“And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us all to get together and sing these songs.” I will be holding you to this, Blondie.

Anyway, while you’re singing and dancing and probably not knowing the words to all the songs, since you haven’t been a fan since 2007, I’ll be crying in my room, truly experiencing Swift’s 10th studio album: a real-life, tortured, tormented midnight. So, I don’t know, who’s the real winner here?! (Definitely not me.)

“Thank you for wanting to be there,” Swift ended the statement. “You have no idea how much that means.” K.