Taylor Swift performs during the opening show of the Toronto dates for The Eras Tour on Nov. 14.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
After trying and failing for a year to get her hands on Taylor Swift tickets for herself and her now 11-year-old daughter, Vancouver-based Hailey Hague gave up and came up with a new plan. She would bundle up and take her daughter downtown outside the BC Place stadium where Ms. Swift will be performing in December. ”We were going to listen and sing along with other Swifties,” she said.
But on Monday, while watching television, she was jolted off the couch by an alert from one of the many X accounts she follows for ticket drops. “This little notification just said, ‘Go!’ ”
Ms. Hague knew immediately what it meant. She rushed to Ticketmaster, where she was able to get her hands on the coveted Eras Tour tickets for $16.50 a pop. The only catch? The obstructed seats are behind the massive stage, meaning there’s no view of the singer or the show.
Once Ticketmaster ended the sale for Monday’s discounted tickets, many of the same seats immediately popped up on resale platforms such as StubHub – where prices skyrocketed to an average of well above $1,500. By Wednesday, some obstructed-view tickets appeared to be listed for almost $3,000, sparking renewed outrage against Ticketmaster, StubHub and the poor regulation of ticket sales across Canada.
When asked why Swifties might want to pay for a show without a view, Ms. Hague had a ready answer.
“It’s just being around other people, other Swifties … the atmosphere is going to be insane,” she said. “All the singing along and the dancing, and just like the whole experience of, you know, singing along with other people that are familiar with Taylor Swift and love her music.”
But the price was too high for 55-year-old Robin Toma. She’d spent countless hours in Ticketmaster queues, entered every contest she could find, subscribed to dozens of ticket-drop alerts and faced a relentless wave of ticket scammers – all in the hope of securing a ticket. One thing she won’t do is shell out more than $1,000 for a seat with no view.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking…I have a good job but there’s no way I can afford to pay $1,500 for a seat where I can’t see her at all. There’s no view at all,” said Ms. Toma. (Tickets seen by The Globe and Mail show a disclaimer promising fans a view of the show through “behind-stage video.”)
In an e-mailed statement, Ticketmaster senior vice-president of corporate affairs Kaitlyn Henrich wrote: “Ticketmaster works to put tickets on sale in accordance with the artist terms.”
After being shut out of Ticketmaster’s waitlist, Ms. Toma turned to StubHub, where she heard the cheap tickets were being resold at a slight premium. “Then they all started popping up. Some were $1,500; some were $1,800; some went up to $2,000.”
Kevin Callahan, North American head of government relations at StubHub, said in a statement that the demand for Eras Tour tickets is “unprecedented”– the biggest-selling tour ever on StubHub, outselling Ms. Swift’s 2018 Reputation Tour 26 times over.
“Given how the primary ticketing market currently operates, it is unsurprising that the late release of additional tickets during a period of intense demand forced thousands of fans into long virtual queues,” he said, adding that secondary-market prices on platforms such as StubHub reflect this demand.
Mr. Callahan said that StubHub does not set ticket prices and that the Eras Tour has “underscored the need to rethink and disrupt the current way tickets are sold.”
Ms. Henrich said Ticketmaster would welcome a conversation with governments about placing a cap on concert resale prices. “We can’t tackle a $13-plus-billion resale industry alone,” she said.
After a demoralizing experience trying to secure tickets to both the Vancouver and Toronto shows countless times with no success, while dodging legions of scammers in the process, Ms. Toma said it would be her last attempt at getting tickets to the show.
“On the daily, I’m receiving seven to 10 private messages from [scammers],” she said. “Some of them seem really legit and they suck you right in.”
This struggle is all too, well, familiar for Swifties, said Taryn DaSilva, who’s amassed nearly 30,000 followers running a popular TikTok channel helping fans navigate ticket drops and dodge scams.
After the latest drop, she said she was flooded with comments from desperate fans willing to pay almost any price to get their hands on tickets. Each comment was followed by countless messages from scammers boasting to have the goods.
“Tons of fans messaged me saying ‘I haven’t been able to access tickets. … my daughter really wants to go, my mom really wants to see her, so I bought the resale ticket for $2,000,’” she said.
Ms. DaSilva herself was unable to secure a ticket from either the resale – or any sale for that matter. Instead, in a stroke of luck, she ended up winning a ticket from a contest by Avion, a bank-owned loyalty program.
