It’s been a massive week for Swifties Down Under. Even with two pre-sales, a general sale, and added tour dates, millions of Australian Taylor Swift fans have missed out on a chance to get tickets.
But that doesn’t mean that the journey is over! If you missed out through the regular sale, there is still a chance that you’ll be able to see the Eras Tour when it comes to Australia.
READ MORE: ‘I’ve been to eight Eras shows so far – here’s what it’s like’
Though Ticketek is the only official ticket seller for the Eras tour, I’d bet a signed Taylor Swift CD that there will be PLENTY of tickets up for resale through other vendors.
Let me start off by being very clear: WE DON’T LIKE SCALPERS. But we do love people who resell their tickets for face value when they realise they can’t go.
READ MORE: Aussie Swifties pulling from housing deposit funds for tickets
Thankfully, all her concerts have been deemed Major Events, protecting every ticket from scalpers. If anyone tries to sell their tickets on a site like eBay, Gumtree, or Marketplace for more than 110 per cent of the original price, they will be penalised.
This is in an effort to stop ticket bots, automated programs which scoop up tickets during the official sale and resell them at a huge mark-up on other sites. For Swift’s US tour dates, this was a huge issue, with some tickets selling on Stubhub for over $10,000.
I have already seen people trying to resell the tickets they bought in Wednesday’s presale. If you’re wondering to yourself “now who the heck would sell their tickets after trying so hard?”, consider these examples:
- People who panic-bought VIP tickets, then managed to get cheaper tickets in another sale and plan to resell their original seats.
- People who tried for both Melbourne and Sydney, ended up with both and want to sell one set.
- Group chats who got over-excited – everyone bought a set of tickets and now they have 16 tickets to one show but only four people.
- People who bought tickets for family members who are now saying “I don’t want to pay $300 sorry”.
- Girls who bought tickets for their boyfriends, but they break up between now and February.
- Casual fans who only know a couple songs from Folklore, that bought tickets just because they got through the queue, who suddenly need money in December for festival season and decide to resell their seats.
Yes some of these may be super specific – and I’m not wishing breakups for anyone, but it’s all to show that there are a ton of reasons people will be selling their tickets
I have personally bought two last-minute tickets to Eras shows, both just two hours before she took the stage. This was in the US, so things may be different here: take everything I’m saying with a grain of salt!
The US ticket seller, Ticketmaster, did random ticket drops of leftover tickets on the day of each show. This is probably because they cancelled their general sale after the pre-sale had such high demand – they had a couple hundred tickets left unsold for each show but not enough to sell in a big batch.
Will Ticketek do the same thing here? It’s unclear. I’d recommend following a local Taylor Swift update account on social media to stay abreast of what’s going on – such as @TSwiftNZ which is run by a Kiwi.
As for buying resale tickets, you have a few options: Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, eBay, Viagogo.
There will probably be dedicated Eras Tour Resell Facebook groups – I have friends in the US who got tickets this way.
READ MORE: Frenzy as more than one million Taylor Swift fans fight for less than 450,000 Aussie tickets
You’ve just got to be SUPER careful about scammers.
If you’re serious about buying a ticket, message the seller and ask them to show you a screen recording of their confirmation email, rather than just a screenshot.
Ticketek won’t be sending out digital tickets until just a few weeks before the show. It’s an effort to stop scalping, but it’s kind of annoying for people who are legitimately trying to sell tickets to other fans.
Just be aware that if you do buy a ticket via resale, you won’t have it straight away –maybe it’s safer to pay the seller a small deposit and send the rest when you have the tickets.
The main thing is to not get too distraught. It might feel like you’re the only one who missed out on tickets – especially when you’re scrolling through Instagram stories today – but stats show that more people missed out than actually got them.
Good luck and Godspeed.
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