Taylor Swift tour pre-sale goes live with staggered launch to avoid Ticketmaster disaster

The wait is over for thousands of lucky Taylor Swift fans, ITV News' Ellie Pitt reports

Thousands are braving online queues as ticket pre-sales for Taylor Swift's anticipated UK Eras tour have officially begun.

The pop superstar, 33, has had to stagger the sale of her concert tickets following the disastrous initial release for the tour's US leg in November.

Ticketmaster were forced to cancel the general sale last year, citing “insufficient ticket inventory” to meet “extraordinarily high demands”.

The ticket company had previously asked fans on Twitter to be patient as “millions” tried to secure seats in the US, causing “historically unprecedented demand”.

But the site eventually crashed, and the provider said it did not have enough tickets.

Fans reported being shocked by steep prices for tickets - some in the thousands as demand increased - and a US Senate special committee eventually held a hearing to examine the lack of competition in the ticketing industry.

At the time, Swift voiced her frustration: "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," she said.

"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."

Ticketmaster cancels next Taylor Swift concert ticket sale
Taylor Swift, who has been touring the US this year, has been re-releasing her old music. Credit: AP

Both Ticketmaster and AXS are hoping to avoid a repeat of the incident for UK fans.

For fans who bought Swift's Midnights album between August 29, 2022 and October 27, 2022, they should have received an email with their unique pre-sale access code that cannot be shared.

Pre-sale went live at 11am on Monday for the June 21 date at Wembley, London and the June 7 date at BT Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh.

Reports suggested more than 15,000 were already in the pre-sale queue before midday.

At 1pm, two more shows will go live, Wembley's August 15 date and Edinburgh's BT Murrayfield's June 8 date.

Lastly, at 3pm, people will be able to purchase pre-sale tickets for the June 9 date in Edinburgh.

The world tour starts in August of this year and will end a year later, seeing her travel across five continents.

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