Ticketmaster says it is giving some Taylor Swift fans another opportunity to score tickets to her upcoming Eras Tour after millions of fans ran up against technical difficulties last month when they initially went on sale.
A certain number of “Verified Fans” who missed out on the first ticket-sale debacle were notified by email on Monday that they will have another chance to buy two tickets to see Swift, according to Slate.
A “Verified Fan” is a Ticketmaster sign-up program that attempts to verify that the people purchasing the tickets are actually planning to go to the show, as opposed to resell the tickets for a profit.
All fans who qualified for this buying opportunity should have received an invite by Dec. 12, and must submit a purchasing request before Dec. 23, according to Ticketmaster. Giving verified fans who attempted to buy tickets before another chance at getting tickets was an idea from Swift’s team, the press release states.
MarketWatch reached out to Ticketmaster, but the company would not say how many tickets will be sold at this sale.
Swift was critical of Ticketmaster and the Eras Tour ticketing rollout after millions of fans ran into technical difficulties trying to buy them.
Swift called the process “excruciating,” and added “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,” she said, referring to Ticketmaster.
The company later apologized to fans for problems with the ticket sale.
Days after the November sale, Ticketmaster-owned Live Nation
LYV,
chairman Greg Maffei told CNBC that the company is “sympathetic” to fans, but added the “reality is, it’s a function of the massive demand that Taylor Swift has,” saying 14 million people (including bots) rushed the site — which was only supposed to be opened up for 1.5 million verified Swift fans.
Ticketmaster said overall that millions of fans tried to get tickets to see Swift’s first tour in five years, and despite the problematic rollout, Maffei said they still managed to sell more than 2 million tickets. “We could’ve filled 900 stadiums.”
The news comes as Ticketmaster was under fire again for another ticketing issue, this time surrounding musical artist Bad Bunny. The company apologized for an “unprecedented” number of fake tickets to a Bad Bunny show in Mexico’s Estadio Azteca last Friday.
Hundreds of fans planning to attend the show were not allowed in after it became clear they had fake, duplicated or canceled tickets to the event.
The U.S. Department of Justice said it is creating an anti-trust investigation into Ticketmaster, the New York Times reported in November. The report says the investigation pre-dates the events surrounding Swift’s tour tickets and Bad Bunny’s Mexico show.