Taylor Swift’s Australian Eras tour: Ticket-buying ‘frenzy’ highlights need for a better way

Swift shook off Aotearoa for her Eras tour, reportedly because none of our stadiums are big enough to host her. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

Even though it was happening in Australia, the pain was relatable. Taylor Swift fans, which these days appear to be everyone, were being asked to calm down for being too loud about the absolute nightmare of trying to acquire tickets to her upcoming shows.

With Swift shaking off Aotearoa for her Eras tour, reportedly because none of our stadiums are big enough to host her, planeloads of Kiwi Swifties began preparations to travel across the ditch to see the pop heroine.

The pre-sale opened on Wednesday, and fans on both sides of the Tasman were hunched over their phones and computers waiting to spring into action the instant tickets became available. Many were juggling multiple browsers on multiple devices to increase their slim chances. Reportedly, up to 800,000 others logged on during the dark hours of the early morning in a bid to be at the front of the queue when the floodgates opened.

While that tactic used to work in the olden days of lining up outside record shops to snag tickets, I don’t know if the virtual ticketing gods play by those same rules. But desperate times, desperate measures. It’s been five years since Swift appeared Down Under. Who knows when she’ll be back, or even if she’ll be back?

Taylor Swift fans appear to have caused site outages as they attempted to secure pre-sale tickets on the American Express Australia website. Photo / Getty Images, Twitter

As anyone who’s ever been to a concert knows, the countdown to go time is a heady rush of nervy apprehension and hopeful belief that you will be among the anointed few who are ushered straight through to purchase tickets. I have never been one of the chosen. Instead, my experience is usually one of desperate frustration that feels similar to waiting outside a public toilet when the person inside has made themselves extremely comfortable.

I think we all know that hopeless feeling of being stuck on the landing page and fighting the urge to hit the refresh button because you know doing so will dump you back at the end of the virtual queue while every fibre of your being screams at you to do so because you want to do something.

As a regular concert-goer, I can attest that this is one of the most excruciatingly nerve-shattering experiences an able-bodied, healthy person can go through. And I’ve never tried to get tickets to a show one million other people are also trying to get tickets for at the same time.

This is the gobsmackingly high number of people who reportedly logged onto Ticketek’s Australia site on Wednesday. With that many desperate Swifties hammering the site, it’s little wonder that it did not go smoothly, with horror tales being reported in the press and on social media.

The most common complaint was that people never got past ‘The Lounge’, which is the page you sit on while hoping to be put through to the buy page. It really should be renamed ‘The Church’ due to the amount of praying that goes on as people wait.

For many, this is where their hopes and dreams of seeing T-Swift live in concert died. They can be considered the lucky ones. Surely, there is no crueller fate than ascending to the purchase page, adding tickets to your cart and then having the bloody website crash on you. Those this happened to would be left with extremely bad blood indeed.

Taylor Swift fans flocked to the website in an effort to secure pre-sale tickets. Photo / AP, Ticketek

I’m no fan of Ticketek, but with the sheer number of people scrambling for tickets and Ticketek’s admission that they repelled “more than half a billion bots” that were also smashing the site, it’s understandable there were problems. On the other hand, Ticketek literally has one job. And it’s a job that they are not at all shy about piling fees on to.

With only 450,000 golden tickets available across Tay Tay’s five Australian gigs and over one million people chasing them, mass transtasman disappointment is a given. There will always be winners and losers, but there has to be a better way to play the game than the Hail Mary hope-and-pray system we have now.

How that looks, I don’t know. It just sucks that before you can enjoy a concert, you have to suffer through one of the most stressful and exasperating processes imaginable. For the vast majority, this is their only concert-going experience.

Surprisingly, the pre-sale lasted a good two hours before selling out, which suggests either a generous ticket allocation or an automated system that moves with all the speed and urgency of a lethargic snail.

In Australia, Wednesday’s ticket quest was described as a “battle” or a “frenzy”, two things I generally try to avoid. Ticketek really needs to work this out, because entertainment is supposed to be fun, not the modern equivalent of gladiatorial combat.

There does, however, remain a glimmer of hope for all those who missed out on Wednesday. The general sale to see Taylor Swift on her Eras tour begins today. May the odds be ever in your favour.