Ever since Taylor Swift announced her plans to perform in Australia, demand for her concert tickets are so high the AMEX presale crashed several times and have since sold out. For desperate Taylor Swift, it’s not just fellow fan frenzy you are up against, it’s also scalpers.
So how do you stand the best chance possible to get your hands on the hottest tickets in town? Well, the answer is to be organised.
Kate Pattison, PhD Candidate in Music Industry, RMIT University, has outlined her tips for buying the tickets.
Top Tips For Buying Taylor Swift Tickets
- Log in to your Ticketek account before you join the queue
- Before the sale, make sure that you have all the details filled out in your Ticketek account. Most importantly, make sure your payment details are filled in, as this will speed up the check-out process. If you can, have a secondary payment option included, as a back up in case you have any issues.
- Discuss the types of tickets, and exactly how much money your group is happy to spend, before the sale, as it’s likely there will be limited ones available if you do get through. You don’t want to waste time messaging friends back and forth to agree on what to buy, as there’s a very high chance that someone else will grab them and buy them in that time.
- Set up a group chat or shared document with the friends that you’re buying tickets with, so that it’s quick and easy to communicate about where you are in the queue and what tickets you may have access to. Some people are even setting up syndicates, where a group of friends are all organising to buy 4 tickets, and then sharing them amongst the group.
- Clear your cache! In the AMEX sale yesterday, some fans were receiving an ‘access denied’ message when trying to get onto the sale. Ticketek has advised that clearing your cache will fix this error.
- Even if you don’t get through straight away, keep trying. Until Ticketek releases an ‘allocation exhausted’ message, there’s a chance tickets will still be available in the hours after the initial sale.
Given the number of Taylor Swift fans, there are going to be more winners than losers, and it’s likely Australians will experience the same ticketing nightmare as the US, according to Kate.
“There’s been chatter online from fans feeling they’ve been priced out of this tour, including the cost of flights, accommodation, and the tickets themselves – which are being sold at high resale prices,” says Kate.
With an estimated wealth of $US740 million, Taylor Swift was ranked #34 on this year’s Forbes Self Made Women List and #79 on the 2022 Forbes Power Women list. Swift’s Australian shows, presented by Crown and Frontier Touring, are estimated to rake in $1.5 billion.
“US fans have waited in virtual queues for hours and others took work off for the opportunity to buy tickets at the original prices only to find they must go to third-party resale sites.
“Swift will only be coming to two Australian cities. This means fans from all over Australia, New Zealand and some parts of Asia will be vying for tickets for only five shows.
“While the US had a system that allowed fans to get earlier ticket access, Australia does not, meaning that everyone – local and global fans, their friends and scalpers – will be trying to purchase tickets all at the same time.
“The demand for Taylor Swift’s concerts is so high that I can’t imagine that there won’t be ticketing issues in Australia.
“Today’s AMEX presale, which was only for cardholders, has already crashed several times, which isn’t promising for the general sales.
“Australia has better laws around resales, which will hopefully mean that the resale prices can’t get up into the thousands.
“In the US, because so many Swifties couldn’t afford to buy tickets from scalpers (or had been scammed), fans resorted to creating a marketplace to buy and sell tickets at face value on Twitter.
“The account has over 185,000 followers, showing just how high the demand is, and how much Swifties care about helping each other.
“That said, ticketing is likely to still be an issue even if scalpers are countered sufficiently.”
Kate Pattison is a PhD Candidate in Music Industry at RMIT University. Her research is on online pop music fandom, with a focus on fans of Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, Delta Goodrem and BTS. She also researched Swifties in her Honours thesis, Reputation: Negotiating fan identities in the Taylor Swift fandom.
