Taylor Swift is bringing her Eras Tour to Australia. Photo / AP
Taylor Swift is bringing her Eras Tour to Australia. Photo / AP
Look what you’ve made us do Taylor Swift.
The beloved pop star is returning to Australia next year for five massive shows – two of which will be the biggest audiences of her career – and today fans will have their second chance, following the American Express pre-sale, at securing pre-sale tickets,
But with well over one million people signed up for Frontier Touring’s presale event and only 450,000 tickets available across the five Australian shows, with an unknown percentage available in the presale today, it’s guaranteed that many fans will be in for a cruel summer.
Regardless of the odds rivalling the hunger games, fans are gearing up for a stressful lunchbreak as they try to make their wildest dreams come true first at midday and secondly at 4pm.
Taking to TikTok, many are sharing tips on the best ways to secure tickets, while others are sharing the extent they are going to to make sure they have the best chance possible.
One person shared a screenshot with followers where she appeared to ask her boss permission to use her phone during work hours, “I am buying Taylor Swift concert ticket tomorrow and the sale starts at 10am (12pm NZT) in the morning. I need your permission to use my phone. I won’t be using it the whole time.”
She went on to explain that she is “very desperate” to get the tickets and said the presale will start around the same time as her break for the day. Her understanding boss replied “good luck hunting your first concert ticket”.
Elsewhere a fan shared a screenshot of her work calendar for the day showing she has blocked out an hour to make sure she has no meetings during the presale event. The calendar event reads “pls don’t book me in for a meeting I will be booking Taylor Swift ticket and probably crying.”
Another fan took it to a larger extreme and revealed she has requested a day off work so she can partake in the presale. She told fans in a TikTok video, “the humiliation of having to request a day off work with the reason being ‘Taylor Swift tickets presale’”.
Many fans supported the woman’s decision with one person writing in the comment section, “my manager is v supportive because she doesn’t want to deal with me if I don’t get tickets” another said, “I just blocked my calendar for the whole afternoon”, a third person said, “I told my manager I ‘had an important meeting’.”
If you’re a Swiftie competing for presale tickets today, here is everything you need to know:
What are the odds of getting tickets?
For any Swifties wanting to get their hands on one of the 450,000 tickets, Marie Claire revealed that after combining the Australian and New Zealand populations, there is a 1.4 per cent chance of securing a ticket.
And while it sounds like a scarily low number, they are significantly better odds than what Americans faced. With 336 million Americans battling for 2.6 million tickets, it was estimated that only 0.77 per cent of fans (per capita) secured tickets.
Over one million fans are trying to secure pre-sale tickets in today's Frontier Touring presale. Photo / Getty Images
How to get tickets
If you missed out on the American Express Australia presale on Monday – which saw the website experience outages 30 minutes before the sale even began – never fear. You have at least two more chances to take part in the great war.
Members of Frontier Touring will be able to access a VIP presale from Wednesday, June 28. The Sydney shows will go on sale at 10am (12pm NZT) while tickets for the Melbourne shows will go on sale at 2pm (4pm NZT).
To access the sale, fans will need to register with Frontier and receive a personalised code which needs to be entered to access the presale. The sale will last 24 hours, or until the allocation is exhausted and only includes tickets for the VIP packages.
There is a restriction of four tickets per person.
Taylor Swift fans trying to access the American Express Australia pre-sale will only have access to the top two VIP packages. Photo / Twitter
Speaking to news.com, a spokesperson for Ticketek said “Queuing is a necessary part of the purchasing process. A way of ensuring fair access to tickets for all fans.
“Fans must remember to not leave the Lounge page or refresh their browser. The page will refresh itself frequently to let more fans through to purchase. Once fans are in the Lounge, they should sit tight and wait to be let through to the event page. And then once they’re through they need to remember to keep an eye on the timer and complete their purchase within the time frame.”
What if I miss out?
If you miss out on presale tickets, don’t enter your anti-hero era just yet. There is still one more official opportunity to get your hands on tickets to one of Swift’s five shows.
The general sale – which is open to anybody – will begin on Friday, June 30 with Sydney tickets available from 10am (12pm NZT) and Melbourne tickets on sale from 2pm (4pm NZT).
And finally, if you aren’t a part of the 1.4 per cent of people who managed to get tickets through any of the three sale events, keep an eye on the Ticketek website because even though it feels more impossible than not crying during All Too Well (10-minute version), sometimes resales are your only way into the Swiftie filled arena.
Why do I have to go to Australia?
Swift has visited Aotearoa three times before, first in 2012 as part of her Speak Now Tour, the second in 2013 as part of The Red Tour and most recently in 2018 as part of her Reputation Tour but unfortunately it was announced last week that her Eras Tour will not come to New Zealand.
Speaking to the Herald, a well-placed insider believes Swift’s snub isn’t due to bad blood with NZ but rather two more innocent reasons. “Why isn’t she coming? Is it because of the stage size? Or is it because Kiwis are losing their love of live music?”
“We can do big shows here, but can we?” they said.
Two "eras" of the Eras Tour stage design. Photo / Getty Images
The industry insider went on to claim that the lack of ticket sales could be more of a reason for the snub than the stage size. “People [musicians] come here and they can’t financially make it work. How many shows does Taylor Swift have to sell before she starts covering her costs? How many crew is she travelling with?” they said.
“There are some shows on that scale that they have to sell out the first two before the promoter even starts making money.”
But they also admitted stage size could be a massive reason for the snub. Swift’s Eras Tour stage is reportedly 75 metres long with an additional 10m backstage space. Eden Park - New Zealand’s largest stadium - comes in at 109m, meaning if the Eras tour visited the grounds, there would be little room for an audience.
