If one song off of Midnights could describe the chaos surrounding Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, it would be “The Great War ” (note lyric references throughout the article).

After releasing her latest studio album, Midnights, Taylor Swift announced in October that she would be back on tour. In the Eras Tour, swifties will re-explore all of her previous musical eras with her, from country to pop, in various stadiums all across the U.S.

Swifites were eager to get their hands on tickets, especially since the last Lover Fest tour had to be cancelled due to Covid-19. The recent surge of Gen Z fans after her album Folklore ‘s release didn’t help with demand either. The album was all over TikTok with the songs “august” and “mirrorball” becoming trending audios. 

On the morning of Thursday, October 13th at 10:00 AM, presale tickets began to sell, and right off the bat, people had to wait in queues longer than 2,000 people. But, the troubles only started there. Crashing and glitching, 505 error messages, paused queues, presale codes not working, bots, scalpers, and greedy ticket resellers only fueled the insanity. Within hours, resold tickets had already reached preposterous prices of over $20,000. As Taylor Swift sings, “All that bloodshed, crimson clover, Uh-huh, sweet dream was over”.

“Flashes of the battle come back to me in a blur” when I think of presale day. I got pretty lucky however, and with an early queue number of 452 for the last show in Chicago, I managed to score 2 tickets. From the moment school started, to running through the school with my computer open since first period, to checking my place in the queue nonstop all day, to the queue being paused right after it opened, and then unpaused, I finally got to buy my tickets during last period, which happened to be gym. I was extremely exhausted after the 4-hour transaction, but nonetheless grateful that I got the tickets in the first place.

However, other people hadn’t been as lucky as me, and by the end of the day, fans were disappointed and outraged at how Ticketmaster dealt, or rather didn’t deal, with the “historically unprecedented demand” for tickets, said Ticketmaster in a tweet. Ticketmaster also revealed that 2 million tickets alone were sold that day, causing the general sale of tickets on Friday to be canceled due to the lack of tickets and the overwhelming demand. Some Swifties could say that they “got a sense [they’d] been betrayed”.

Taylor responded to the drama in an Instagram story, in which she apologized to her fans, criticizing Ticketmaster, “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and they assured us 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,” Swift stated. 

“It turned into something bigger” when the case even caught the attention of various U.S. politicians, who agree that the recent merging of Live Nation and Ticketmaster has caused a lack of competition in the ticket industry, and that Ticketmaster has become a monopoly. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voiced her stance claiming, “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved, and they need to be reined in,” the congresswoman tweeted. “Break them up.”

The Justice Department has consequently launched an investigation into Ticketmaster, and a hearing has been organized to discuss concerns about Ticketmaster by the U.S. Senate subcommittee involved with antitrust and consumer rights. 

Most recently, Ticketmaster is additionally facing a lawsuit from 25 swifties around the world for fraud and intentional misrepresentation, seeking $2,500 for each civil violation.

Tickets are still available at most stadiums from resale websites such as StubHub ranging from $400-$3,000, yet still at overpriced prices.

Ultimately, “we survived the Great War”, or at least for now.