Taylor Swift‘s 1989 World Tour was an absolute concert sensation, selling out concerts globally within minutes of the ticket release and becoming the highest-grossing tour of 2015. Turns out that the upcoming Reputation tour… may not match those numbers. Taylor’s spicy new vengeful persona is also a vastly more expensive one, and that’s not necessarily translating to ticket sales.
According to The New York Post, not one of the 33 tour dates scheduled between May 8th and October 6th has sold out on Ticketmaster. They quote an unnamed ‘industry insider’ who says that sales so far have been a “mega disappointment”.
There are hundreds if not thousands of tickets left for every show,” they said.
Some have blamed the widely criticised “Verified Fan” program which was pitched as a way of battling scalpers by ensuring tickets go to real fans, but ended up looking a lot more like a system to compel Swifties to buy a shitload of very spenno merch. The high price of tickets have also been cited as a likely factor.
HOLY SHIT!!! $818 for a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert??? are you f#*king kidding me??? #reputationtour pic.twitter.com/SYT3QkxOEW
— Presiding Angel Of Pop (@YoricktheJester) December 21, 2017
Two years ago, Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour tickets sold out in only a couple of hours so she added more shows. Today, you can *still* get really well-placed Reputation floor seats. If that doesn’t tell you your tickets are too expensive, idk what will.
— not lex (@notlex682) December 25, 2017
On the other hand, it’s not like this tour is a “disaster” as the Post helpfully calls it. It’s still going to make a bucketload of money. An audit of Ticketmaster seat maps by Amplify shows that most dates have a few hundred seats left at max – though there are some surprising outliers, like the oddly empty concert in Pasadena.
Fact of the matter is this: old Taylor, who sold tickets for her concerts at $60 a pop, can’t come to the phone right now. She’s dead. New Taylor, who sells tickets for hundreds of dollars, is here now.
