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Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour will be over soon, and I for one will be happy. Not because I’m sick of hearing about it (okay, maybe a little), but because of the constant normalizing of paying considerably more than face value for a concert ticket. On top of this is the bragging about how much a ticket was resold for. Scalping has never been something to brag about – until now.
The Eras Tour is mostly attended by Swifties. Aside from being fans of Taylor Swift, the term symbolizes friendship, connectedness, community, inclusivity and empowerment, to name a few positive traits.
However, I’ve been proudly told by many parents who are in Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Calgary and who were lucky enough to win the lottery-like system and secure face value tickets that they bought the maximum of four tickets so they could sell half of them to not only pay for their own tickets to the show, but also for a hotel room and merchandise. They thought nothing of the fact that they sold their extra tickets to people who are just like them but were unlucky in securing face value tickets. The latter are now prey, and the predator has Row 10 on the floor.
It didn’t have to be this way. There could be a system in place that encourages the positive, Swiftie-like behaviour we should want to promote, especially for the younger generation. Rules exist in places like France and Germany, where there are restrictions on the price tickets can be resold for. And there are a number of other ways to prevent this.
Ticket scalping (or reselling, as it’s termed these days - a name that sounds more palatable), shouldn’t be a way to make money because it’s capitalizing on vulnerability.
The practice of scalping tickets has existed for decades, mainly in the concert and sports industries.
Before tickets were mainly purchased and resold on the internet, scalpers would wave the physical paper tickets outside a venue yelling “Who needs tickets!” Sometimes they made money, selling for above face value, and sometimes they lost money, something that could happen if the event wasn’t popular. Scalping was illegal in Ontario until 2015 and those people shouting were usually looking around for police officers.
Today, it is legal in Ontario and there is no cap on how much more someone can resell a ticket for, making it particularly lucrative if you have the right event.
Complaints about Taylor Swift concert ticket scams under investigation by Toronto-area police forces
Enter the Eras Tour, where everyone is getting in on the action, especially the Swifties, buying more tickets than they plan to use if they were lucky enough to be able to buy them and scalping the extra ones to make a quick few thousand extra dollars.
Capitalism, I’ve been told, is what this is called. True, supply and demand will drive prices, either up or down. What I’m talking about is an unnecessary practice of deliberately purchasing and reselling tickets to make money, thereby reducing the supply of face value tickets. Those extra tickets someone bought for a show could have gone to another Swiftie at face value, promoting the Swiftie way.
Canadian fans hoping to see Swift in Toronto or Vancouver had to sign up to be a Ticketmaster verified fan. Then, a few lucky ones were emailed a code, which allowed them to enter the queue where they could buy up to four tickets at face value. If you are a Swiftie hoping to use two tickets and go with a friend or child, buying all four was a no brainer. If you had no plans of seeing the show, going through the process and buying all four was also a no-brainer. It is possibly the easiest, low-risk ‘investment’. But it isn’t an investment. It is winning a lottery. People usually don’t brag about winning the lottery, but in this case, it was everywhere. Everyone trying to buy tickets knew demand would be sky-high and they’d find someone so desperate to go, or who wanted their child to go, that the price they listed would be paid.
Ticket scalping shouldn’t be seen as a way to make money, and it’s a dangerous message to send to the next generation of workers – preying on vulnerabilities, which seems very UnSwiftie for both the buyer and the seller. The idea of having so many concerts for The Eras Tour was to give Taylor Swift fans lots of opportunities to see their favorite artist. What resulted was many of them not being able to go to a show because of bloated ticket prices.
There will always be career ticket scalpers – they are likely not Swifties. They probably can’t name one song because they scalp any ticket that will be in high demand. Perhaps Swifties could have beaten them, instead of joining them, in these ways:
- Buy as many tickets as you can, then resell the extras at face value to other friends you know are big fans. That would have been a very Swiftie thing to do. Spread love and friendship, because there should never be a price to pay for that.
- Donate a pair of tickets to a charity, which can give an opportunity for an underprivileged young fan and a parent to go. Caring for others, and acts of goodwill, is also very Swiftie. Recognizing that being able to afford to go to such a concert, even at face value, is a privilege.
- Petition Taylor Swift when The Eras Tour was announced to work with concert venues and official and third-party ticket selling platforms to restrict ticket resales to said platforms and at face value. There are an estimated 100 million Swifties worldwide; such a petition from this group would have embodied the Swiftie qualities of community, inclusivity and empowerment.
If anyone has the power to shut down ticket scalping for The Eras Tour (and beyond), it is Taylor Swift herself and her legion of Swifties. But they didn’t, and countless fans literally paid the price for it.
Further, if the industry really wants to do something about outrageous ticket resale prices, then make tickets non-transferable (like airline tickets). The person who goes to the event is the name that’s on the ticket. You can return the ticket for a full refund (unlike airline tickets) if you can no longer attend and the ticket is then sold again for the face value.
Seems like a Swiftie, straightforward solution.
Eileen Dooley is a talent and leadership development specialist, and a leadership coach, based in Calgary.
