Taylor Swift tour tickets have a 5-hour virtual queue and reach R $ 151 thousand

The sale of tickets for the new tour of American singer Taylor Swift reached demands considered historic in the United States. The opening of the online box office on Wednesday (16), exclusively for Capital One bank customers, was marked by difficulties in accessing the site, virtual queues exceeding five hours and tickets being resold for more than 28 thousand dollars – the equivalent of 151 thousand reais.

After launching in mid-October “Midnights” Taylor’s tenth studio album, the singer announced a new tour under the name of “ages” 🇧🇷 The tour is the first since 2018 and should feature hits from different periods of the artist’s career. At first, 26 shows had been scheduled in the United States between March 18th and August 5th of the next year. The high demand, however, made the number of scheduled presentations rise to 52.

The official start of the pre-sale was scheduled for last Tuesday (15), but had to be postponed until the following day after the Ticketmaster website – the company responsible for selling tickets – presented failures in view of the access of millions of fans Americans and foreigners. The company released a statement calling the demand “unprecedented”, with hundreds of thousands of tickets sold within the first few minutes.

Even over the internet, interested people reported having spent about five hours in the online queue to gain access to the system. The situation even caused discomfort among American politicians, with Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez publishing a message on social networks criticizing Ticketmaster’s monopoly in the segment. “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, merger with LiveNation [produtora dos shows] should never have passed and they need to be controlled,” he wrote.

In an interview with CNN Brazil , student Ashlyn Smith, 20, told of the difficulties trying to acquire tickets for one of the three shows in Tampa, Florida, between the 13th and 15th of April. “I got to the purchase page after three and a half hours of waiting, but when I added the tickets to the virtual cart, I got a notification and was sent back to the end of the queue. Then I waited another three hours until they announced that the pre-order was sold out”. The fan, who lives in Oklahoma and has been to three of Taylor’s other concerts, said she should give it another try on Friday, the opening date of general sale.

Apprehension for some, joy for others. The effort of student Carly Major, 20, who spent five hours on her cell phone trying to make the purchase, was rewarded with two tickets – one for her and one for a friend – for the presentation in Atlanta, Georgia. “It was quite stressful waiting that long in line. I had to change classrooms while I looked at my cell phone looking for tickets”, explains the young woman, who regretted not being able to take her mother to the event. About to go to her second show, she says she expects a mix of new songs with some of the older hits. “It’s impossible to pick a favorite song,” she jokes.

Those who got more tickets or even those who are not interested in going to the show, can try to resell the tickets on other sites. On some platforms, the announced values ​​reached US$ 28,350 thousand (R$ 153 thousand, following the correction). For comparison, tickets for the last Super Bowl, one of the most popular events in the United States and which marks the decision of the American football season in the country, cost an average of US$ 10,427 thousand.

Taylor’s 52 performances scheduled for 2023 mark the triumphant return to the stage of one of the most acclaimed artists of the 21st century and will feature openings for several female artists, such as Phoebe Bridgers and the band Paramore, fronted by Hayley Williams. Winner of 11 Grammy Awards and with more than 83 million listeners per month on Spotify, the 32-year-old singer, affectionately called “blondie” by fans, is currently the most listened to on the platform. The resounding success of the tour raised speculation about concerts around the world, which should be announced in the coming weeks.

In Brazil, Taylor performed only once, in 2012, in a unique show in Rio de Janeiro. At the time, she was leading the Speak Now World Tour, marking the third album of her career. The passage through the capital of Rio de Janeiro yielded a meeting with the sertaneja Paula Fernandes , who participated in a duet on the track Long Live, in addition to memories and memes that remain in the memory of Brazilian “swifties”. A Lover Tour show in São Paulo was scheduled for July 2020, but was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

More than ever, fame has also reverberated offstage for Taylor, who found new airs in 2022. Far from being a “Anti Hero” and increasingly seen as “Mastermind” – both tracks from the new Midnights – his songs became the subject of study in a course at the University of Texas at Austin, alongside renowned names in literature such as William Shakespeare and John Keats, in addition to receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Texas. New York. The artist also participated in the film “Amsterdam” – which features names like Christian Bale, Anya Taylor-Joy and Robert de Niro – and became a source of inspiration for a scientist who named a new species of invertebrate animal in her honor.