'It really pisses me off': Taylor Swift speaks out following Ticketmaster chaos

Taylor Swift has spoken out about a recent ticketing fiasco for her upcoming tour, after millions of her fans encountered issues purchasing show tickets. In a statement posted to her Instagram Stories, she called the entire situation “excruciating” for her to watch and said it really “pisses me off.”

For those out of the loop, Swift recently announced her upcoming Eras tour and tickets went on sale on Tuesday through Ticketmaster. The platform was roundly criticised online over its botched handling of the sale, as the site crashed during its pre-sale, faced delays and technical difficulties over the course of an additional sale and then finally cancelled its general sale.

The company tweeted yesterday, “Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.”

Swift did not explicitly mention Ticketmaster in her statement, but said, “It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans…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.”

“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. 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,” she continued.

She added that she was hoping to add more dates for fans who were unable to get tickets, thanking them for wanting to attend. 

In the wake of the ticketing debacle, the New York Times reported today that the US Justice Department is investigating Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, in an antitrust probe (which is said to predate the recent Swift sale). Live Nation and the Justice Department did not return a request for comment to the outlet.