Taylor Swift performs onstage during The Eras Tour at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on April 28, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo / Getty Images
Taylor Swift performs onstage during The Eras Tour at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on April 28, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo / Getty Images
Taylor Swift’s Sydney shows general public sale has started and almost come to an end, and much like this week’s American Express Australia and Frontier Touring presales, it was absolute chaos.
Earlier this week, reports claimed more than 800,000 people were trying to secure tickets through the presale with news.com.au reporting that today’s numbers were similar.
Frontier Touring has already posted an update on Twitter, sharing that A-G Reserve tickets for all Sydney shows have been nabbed up after two hours, with only VIP and hotel + ticket packages still available.
An earlier updated posted on the Ticketek AU Twitter account told fans one hour after the tickets went live, “Limited A-G Reserve availability Fri, Sat and Sun! Keep trying for all categories on Monday, and all packages for all shows.”
It comes after fans shared their ticket securing set up with one fan showing multiple laptops open on the waiting “lounge” screen, while others made jokes to get them through the stress of it all.
Here we go again. I feel like as a society we’ll all remember the great Taylor Swift ticket dash of 2023. Success or near misses, ticketek time-outs and questioning whether a queue is worth waiting in if it’s a queue in name only. Good luck all 👍🏻 #TaylorSwiftErasTourpic.twitter.com/ckZadmdMrr
Elsewhere, some fans managed to secure tickets within the first 30 minutes of the sale going live. Sharing images of their confirmation screen, one fan said “Ahhhhh I’m going to Taylor Swift”.
It comes after Ticketek released a statement following Wednesday’s presale where they stated that waiting in “queue” for hours before the sale starts won’t help your chances of securing tickets because there is no queue.
Speaking to news.com.au, a spokesman for Ticketek said,“Everyone in the Ticketek lounge has an equal opportunity to get into the site regardless of when they have arrived”.
So if you happened to swoop in and grab A Reserve seats after just 10 minutes, you can only count yourself among “the lucky ones”.
This is the first of two sale events occurring today, the second begins at 4pm NZT and sees tickets for Swift’s Melbourne shows being released to the public. It comes after she added two more dates to the Australian leg of her Eras Tour due to “historically unprecedented demand” for tickets to her already announced five shows.
The additional shows will take place on February 18 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) and the second additional show will take place at Sydney’s Accor Stadium on February 26.
Swift will be the second ever artist to perform three concerts at the MCG – the first was Madonna – and she will also be the first artist ever to perform four concerts at Accor Stadium.
Some superfans waited for hours on the Ticketek website before the presale even began on Wednesday, and it resulted in them entering their bad blood era when they realised fans who hadn’t queued at all were getting tickets first.
Ticketek has since released a statement revealing this is because there is no “queue” as such and fans who enter the waiting lounge will have equal opportunity to get through to the ticket purchasing page. However, they advised accessing the site 15 minutes before the sale is scheduled to begin.
Speaking to news.com.au, a spokesman for Ticketek said,“Everyone in the Ticketek lounge has an equal opportunity to get into the site regardless of when they have arrived”.
So if you happened to swoop in and grab A Reserve seats after just 10 minutes, you can only count yourself among “the lucky ones”.
If you’re one of the fans who didn’t take a day off work to secure tickets and you’re logging onto the website using work Wi-Fi, you may be in for a cruel summer.
7News reported that any fans accessing the website via a work computer face a lower chance of getting tickets than someone using a personal hotspot or home Wi-Fi, as websites like Ticketek consider a single IP address as one user.
Don’t refresh your browser
When you’re in the “pits of hell” watching that little blue line go left to right, left to right, left to right, it can send you into a spiral and refreshing your screen feels like a logical option. But it’s not.
Ticketek has specifically told fans, “Don’t leave the Lounge page or refresh your browser, the page will refresh itself frequently to let more fans through to purchase.”
Taylor Swift fans have the option to pick from six VIP packs and seven seating sections. Photo / Twitter
Once you’re let through to the ticket-buying page, you have a very limited amount of time to secure your pride and joy - your tickets. While the Herald hasn’t seen it themselves, it has been widely reported that there is a timer in the top right-hand corner of the page and if you don’t buy tickets within that allocated time slot, you’ll get kicked off the page.
So, before you even get to that point, decide exactly what tickets you want, whether it’s A reserve or G reserve or one of the six VIP packages.
Another top tip is having a second choice just in case your first isn’t available.
Have your card handy
As stated above, you have a very limited time to get tickets so once you’ve decided what you want, added them to your cart and driven your getaway car to the checkout, don’t let yourself down by misplacing your card.
