Taylor Swift performs onstage during iHeartRadio’s Z100 Jingle Ball 2019 Presented By Capital One on December 13, 2019 in New York City.
Kevin Mazur | Getty Images
Taylor Swift responded to her fans Friday after Live Nation‘s Ticketmaster said a general public sale of tickets to the superstar’s “Eras” tour would be canceled because there weren’t enough tickets to meet high demand.
“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” Swift wrote in a message posted on Instagram. She did not mention Live Nation or Ticketmaster in her statement.
“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them,” she wrote.
Separately, The New York Times reported Friday that Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into parent company Live Nation’s practices. The probe predates the Swift ticket sale this week, according to the report. The Justice Department declined to comment.
Live Nation, Ticketmaster and the company’s largest shareholder, Liberty Media, also didn’t immediately comment about Swift’s Friday statement or the Times’ report on a Justice Department investigation.
Ticketmaster announced the cancellation hours after Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei defended Ticketmaster on Thursday. Maffei blamed a surge of demand from 14 million users, including bots, for site disruptions and slow queues for presales earlier this week.
“It’s a function of Taylor Swift. The site was supposed to open up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans,” Maffei told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “We had 14 million people hit the site, including bots, which are not supposed to be there.”
Maffei said Ticketmaster sold more than 2 million tickets on Tuesday and demand for Swift “could have filled 900 stadiums.”
The “Eras” tour is set to kick off in March 17 in Glendale, Arizona.
Read Swift’s full statement:
Well. It goes without saying that l’m extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, l’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.
There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.
And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs.
Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.
-CNBC’s Sarah Whitten contributed to this article.
