Music. Everybody knows of it. Whether you actively listen to it or not, you definitely have heard of Taylor Swift. She’s been releasing music for almost two whole decades now, and despite the highs and lows of her career in the industry, you cannot deny she is one of the biggest artists and figures in the world as of now and that will not change anytime soon. 

A few months ago, she released her long awaited album Midnights, critically acclaimed by the media and her extremely devoted fanbase. The album was not the only thing that came out related to her music, as she announced she is going on a worldwide tour starting in March 2023, and with no surprise, her fans went crazier then they already have. If there was a craziness scale from 1-10, consider this an 11 or even more.

Swift is going on her “Eras’ tour from March 8th to August 5th, 2023.  Originally, on Ticketmaster, where presale tickets were available, only about 2.4-6 million tickets were actually available. You may think this is already a huge amount alone, until you realize this isn’t some random person nobody cares about; this is Taylor Swift. The artist with 78.7 Spotify monthly listeners (this is just Spotify alone; imagine apple music, YouTube views), and 220 MILLION Instagram followers. For reference to how crazy that is, there are about 74,000 people who live here in Turlock. 2,972.97297 Turlock’s willingly follow her, which shows how crazy of a fanbase she has. 

As stated though, about 2.5 million tickets were available to this tour. While that does seem like an insane amount, it is reported that 14 million people tried entering this presale. It is not even a joke saying that Swift fans (referred as “Swifties”) are not people you want to mess with, it is a pure fact. If you imagined the estimated 11 million people that did not get in were upset, you were right, and upset is a huge understatement.

Her fans already have an extremely bad reputation by everybody that isn’t a part of the swifter group. Her fans have been spotted hating and even doxing those who do not like Swift her you five figures. People hate paying these prices, but I’m sure the experience will be fun for them self or have been involved in beef with her. You can imagine these fans weren’t happy they could see their favorite person in the world. Some fans were blaming Ticketmaster, claiming that summed up, they basically hid tickets around the world and wanted all these fans to rush and get the limited amount. Some fans take the statement “I’d die for you” too seriously because people would actually do this; some claiming “I would literally take a bullet for you in a heartbeat to get these”. Another tweet that is quotable is “The Taylor swift presale is proof the Hunger Games can happen in real life”

Presale tickets cost were ranging from $50-600. As everything with high demand is, once it sells out, scalpers will take huge advantage of the opportunity to resell the product for a huge markup. Most resale tickets range in the $1000+ range, while some very good seats can cost either way.

The struggle for resale is already bad enough, but imagine being a fan trying to get a presale. I asked my friend Rachel, who loves Swift and was told she could go to her concert if she gets the tickets for cheap, how the process was trying to do it. She claimed it was the worst thing ever, citing that she would be in class and walking in the halls refreshing and refreshing, finally getting to the buying point, and having the worst anxiety ever until the purchase was confirmed.