When Taylor Swift announced what will be her first tour in five years, demand for tickets was always going to be high.
But following reports of service failures and delays on the Ticketmaster website, the general sale was called off.
Ticketmaster handled ticket sales for most of the shows on Swift‘s 20-city, 52-date US leg of the tour, although SeatGeek sold tickets for a few performances in Texas and Arizona.
Many fans have been left disappointed. But this is more than just a tale of frustrated Swifties – now the US Senate is involved.
Here’s a look at what happened.
The release of Midnights
Back in August, Swift revealed details of a new album, titled Midnights, telling the stories of “13 sleepless nights” from throughout her life.
The album, her tenth, was released on 21 October and immediately broke streaming records, with Spotify announcing it had become the most-streamed album in a single day – after users reported a huge spike in outages apparently caused by the surge in demand.
Following its release, Swift, 32, became the first artist to claim all top 10 slots in the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, and the album and its lead single Anti-Hero also charted at number one in the UK.
Advertisement
Midnights followed Folklore and Evermore, Swift’s forays into indie and folk which came out just five months apart in 2020 as the world was in various states of lockdown during the pandemic.
Having not toured since 2018, it seemed inevitable an announcement was coming…
The Eras Tour arrives in 2023
Swift announced The Eras Tour on 1 November, telling fans it would be “a journey through the musical eras of my career (past & present!)”.
Dates for the US leg of the tour were announced, kicking off on 18 March 2023 in Glendale, Arizona, with international shows set to follow, the star said.
Swift also confirmed she will be joined by a number of artists during the tour, including bands Paramore and Haim, and solo artists Phoebe Bridgers and Gracie Abrams.
She also shared a verification link for a presale, which meant fans had to register first to be able to buy tickets.
‘Extraordinarily high demands’
On Thursday 17 November, the day before general tickets were due to be made available, Ticketmaster cancelled the sale – citing “insufficient ticket inventory” to meet “extraordinarily high demands”.
It came after the presale two days earlier caused the site to crash, leaving many fans frustrated and unable to get tickets.
The ticket company had previously asked fans on Twitter to be patient as “millions” tried to buy tickets in the presale, causing “historically unprecedented demand”.
Swift’s fans, known as Swifties, criticised the firm on social media after encountering long wait times and site outages during the presales. Some reported waiting in online queues for up to eight hours, with many finding they were too late to purchase tickets, which cost between $49 (£41) and $449 (£377) each.
‘Staggering number of bot attacks’
In a statement, Ticketmaster said it had anticipated heavy demand for tickets, but it was clearly even greater than they had predicted.
A record 3.5 million people registered as verified fans, the company said.
The plan was to invite 1.5 million of those to participate in the sale for all 52 show dates, including the 47 sold by Ticketmaster, with the other 2 million placed on a waiting list.
But this plan, Ticketmaster said, was undermined by attacks by “bots” – automated software requests – as well as demand from those who had not registered beforehand.
“The staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak,” Ticketmaster said.
“Never before has a Verified Fan on sale sparked so much attention – or uninvited volume.”
What did Swift say?
Image: Pic: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
Following the debacle,Swift criticised Ticketmaster, saying she and her team had been assured they could handle the expected surge in 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,” she wrote in a statement on Instagram.
“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.”
The star said that 2.4 million fans had been able to purchase tickets, which was “truly amazing… but it really p***** me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them”.
To those who missed out, she said she hoped to put on more shows.
Why is the US Senate involved?
Image: Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee. Pic: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP
Ticketmaster, which overwhelmingly dominates the ticketing industry, has for years left fans and artists frustrated by hidden fees, rising costs, and limited tickets availability due to presales.
And when these sorts of problems affect Swift, arguably the biggest pop star in the world, it attracts global attention. Which means US politicians are now looking into Ticketmaster’s dominance in the industry.
Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee – chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on competition policy, antitrust, and consumer rights, respectively – have announced plans for a hearing.
“The competition problem in ticketing markets was made painfully obvious when Ticketmaster’s website failed hundreds of thousands of fans hoping to purchase concert tickets,” Ms Klobuchar said.
“The high fees, site disruptions and cancellations that customers experienced shows how Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company does not face any pressure to continually innovate and improve…
“When there is no competition to incentivise better services and fair prices, we all suffer the consequences.”
The issue goes “way beyond Taylor Swift”, she later added on Twitter.
The hearing date and witnesses will be announced at a later date.
What does Ticketmaster say?
The company has posted a lengthy explainer on its Ticketmaster Business website, saying it was aware that a record number of fans would want to buy tickets for Swift’s shows.
“First, we want to apologise to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets,” it said. “Next, we feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened.”
The company went on to say the verified fan registration was designed to help manage high demand – “identifying real humans and weeding out bots”.
However, the demand broke records, with 3.5 million system requests, it said – four times its previous peak. This unprecedented traffic “disrupted the predictability and reliability” of the verified fan registration.
‘Swift would need to perform a stadium show every night for 2.5 years to meet demand’
Ticketmaster said that despite the problems, some 2.4 million tickets have been sold – with two million on Ticketmaster making it the most tickets ever sold for an artist in a single day.
It also said that less than 5% of the tickets for the tour “have been sold or posted for resale on the secondary market”, while sales without the verification process “typically see 20-30% of inventory end up on secondary markets”.
The company is now working “to shore up our tech for the new bar that has been set by demand” for Swift’s tour.
It also said that even when online sales go “flawlessly from a tech perspective”, there are often fans who are left disappointed when they miss out.
“For example: based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)… that’s a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years.
“While it’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on.”
Swifties in the UK and other countries outside the US are still waiting for details of international dates – and hoping their ticket-buying process will be a little smoother.
Tom Cruise has paid tribute to Val Kilmer, wishing his Top Gun co-star “well on the next journey”.
Cruise, speaking at the CinemaCon film event in Las Vegas on Thursday, asked for a moment’s silence to reflect on the “wonderful” times shared with the star, whom he called a “dear friend”.
Kilmer, who died of pneumonia on Tuesday aged 65, rocketed to fame starring alongside Cruise in the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, playing Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, a rival fighter pilot to Cruise’s character Maverick.
Image: Tom Cruise said ‘I wish you well on the next journey’. Pic: AP
Image: Val Kilmer in 2017. Pic: AP
His last part was a cameo role in the 2022 blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick.
Cruise, on stage at Caesars Palace on Thursday, said: “I’d like to honour a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer. I can’t tell you how much I admire his work, how grateful and honoured I was when he joined Top Gun and came back later for Top Gun: Maverick.
“I think it would be really nice if we could have a moment together because he loved movies and he gave a lot to all of us. Just kind of think about all the wonderful times that we had with him.
“I wish you well on the next journey.”
The moment of silence followed a string of tributes from Hollywood figures including Cher, Francis Ford Coppola, Antonio Banderas and Michelle Monaghan.
Kilmer’s daughter Mercedes told the New York Times on Wednesday that the actor had died from pneumonia.
Image: Tom Cruise at Caesars Palace on Thursday. Pic: AP
Diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, Kilmer discussed his illness and recovery in his 2020 memoir Your Huckleberry and Amazon Prime documentary Val.
He underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments for the disease and also had a tracheostomy which damaged his vocal cords and permanently gave him a raspy speaking voice.
Kilmer played Batman in the 1995 film Batman Forever and received critical acclaim for his portrayal of rock singer Jim Morrison in the 1991 movie The Doors.
He also starred in True Romance and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as well as playing criminal Chris Shiherlis in Michael Mann’s 1995 movie Heat and Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone.
In 1988 he married British actress Joanne Whalley, whom he met while working on fantasy adventure Willow.
The couple had two children before divorcing in 1996.
Bruce Springsteen is to release seven albums of mostly unheard material this summer.
The US singer said the songs, written and re-recorded between 1983 and 2018, were being made public after he began completing “everything I had in my vault” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a short video posted on Instagram, Springsteen said the albums were “records that were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released”.
The 83-song collection is being released in a box set called Tracks II: The Lost Albums and goes on sale on 27 June.
Some 74 of the tracks have never been heard before.
Instagram
This content is provided by Instagram, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Instagram cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Instagram cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Instagram cookies for this session only.
Springsteen first teased the release on Wednesday morning with a short social media video accompanied by text which said: “What was lost has been found”.
Tracks II is the follow-up to the star’s first Tracks volume, a four-CD collection of 66 unreleased songs, released in 1998.
Image: Bruce Springsteen at New York’s Carnegie Hall at a tribute to Patti Smith last month. Pic: PA
The New Jersey-born rocker, nicknamed The Boss, last released a studio album in 2022.
Only the Strong Survive was a collection of covers, including songs by Motown and soul artists, such as the Four Tops, The Temptations, The Supremes, Frankie Wilson and Jimmy Ruffin.
The late soul legend Sam Moore, who died in January and was a frequent Springsteen collaborator, sang on two of the tracks.
A man who stalked Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas for six years has avoided jail.
Kyle Shaw, 37, got a 20-month suspended sentence and a lifetime restraining order on contacting Ballas, her mother, niece, and former partner.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that he thought Ballas was his aunt and “began a persistent campaign of contact”.
“He believed, and it’s evident from what he was told by his mother, that her late brother was his father,” said prosecutor Nicola Daley.
The court heard there was no evidence he was wrong, and “limited evidence” he was correct.
Ms Daley said Shaw’s messages had accused Ballas of being to blame for the death of her brother, who took his own life in 2003 aged 44.
He also set up social media accounts in his name.
Shaw had pleaded guilty to stalking the former dancer between August 2017 and November 2023 at a hearing in February.
Incidents included following Ballas’s 86-year-old mother, Audrey Rich, while she was shopping and telling her she was his grandmother.
The court heard in messages to Mrs Rich, Shaw had asked: “Where’s my dad?”
Ballas was so worried for her mother’s safety that she moved her from Merseyside to London.
Image: Kyle Shaw outside court on the day of his sentencing. Pic: PA
In October 2020, Ballas called police after Shaw messaged her and said: “Do you want me to kill myself, Shirley?”
Posts on X included one alongside an image of her home address that warned: “You ruined my life, I’ll ruin yours and everyone’s around you.”
Another referenced a book signing and said: “I can’t wait to meet you for the first time Aunty Shirley. Hopefully I can get an autograph.”
The court was told Ballas’s niece Mary Assall, former partner Daniel Taylor and colleagues from Strictly Come Dancing and ITV’s Loose Women were also sent messages.
‘I know where you live’
On one occasion in late 2023, Shaw called Mr Taylor and told him he knew where the couple lived and described Ballas’s movements.
The court heard the 64-year-old TV star become wary of socialising and stopped using public transport.
Prosecutor Ms Daley said: “She described having sleepless nights worrying about herself and her family’s safety and being particularly distressed when suggestions were made to her that she and her mother were responsible for her brother taking his own life.”
Image: Ballas has been head judge on Strictly Come Dancing since 2017. Pic: PA
Shaw cried and wiped away tears as he was sentenced on Tuesday.
The judge said the stalking stemmed from his mother telling him Ballas’s brother, David Rich, was his biological father.
“I’m satisfied that your motive for this offending was a desire to seek contact with people you genuinely believed were your family,” he said.
“Whether in fact there’s any truth in that belief is difficult, if not impossible, to determine.”
Image: Shaw pictured at court in February. Pic: PA
Defence lawyer John Weate said Shaw had been told the story by his mother “in his mid to late teens” and had suffered “complex mental health issues” since he was a child.
He added: “He now accepts that Miss Ballas and her family don’t wish to have any contact with him and, importantly, he volunteered the information that he has no intention of contacting them again.”
Shaw, of Whetstone Lane in Birkenhead, also admitted possessing cannabis and was ordered to undertake a rehab programme.