Taylor Swift speaks out after Ticketmaster cancels her tour's general ticket sale: 'It pisses me off'

Taylor Swift is taking a strong stance for her fans after Ticketmaster announced it would cancel a scheduled general public ticket sale for her upcoming Eras tour after "extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory." 

"Well. It goes without saying that I'm extremely protective of my fans," the pop star, 32, wrote in a statement on her Instagram story Friday. "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. It's really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse." 

Previous story:Ticketmaster cancels general ticket sale for Taylor Swift tour after 'extraordinarily high demands'

Ticketmaster's announcement followed several days of turbulence for fans hoping to score tickets to the U.S. leg of the Eras tour, which is scheduled for 52 shows in 20 cities from March to August 2023.

Tuesday morning's verified fan presale, which only allowed in a select number of fans who registered in advance and received a presale code from Ticketmaster, saw major delays, errors and pauses in the queues to purchase tickets. The site was supposed to be open to 1.5 million verified fans, but 14 million users – including bots – hit the site, Live Nation Chairman Greg Maffei said in a Thursday interview with CNBC. Ticketmaster sold 2 million tickets on Tuesday, he added. 

As a result, the Capital One cardholders presale, which was scheduled to open that afternoon, was rescheduled to Wednesday and Ticketmaster announced Thursday that Friday's general ticket sale was off. 

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"There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I'm trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward," Swift continued in her statement. "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. It's truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them." 

Ticketmaster's cancellation didn't sit well with Swift fans who were not selected for the verified fan presale and had planned to buy their tickets via the general sale. Some tickets on third-party sites Thursday were going for tens of thousands of dollars.

The controversy even garnered attentions from politicians, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who expressed "serious concerns about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers"; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted "Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in"; and Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, who said he is launching an anti-trust probe after consumer complaints related to the presale. 

While Swift didn't offer any concrete plans to add more shows to her tour schedule or welcome more fans into the existing stops, she did address "those who didn't get tickets" directly.

"All I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs," she concluded. "Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means." 

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