For Louisiana Swifties, divide and conquer seems to be the prevailing strategy to acquire elusive tickets to the recently announced October 2024 New Orleans shows of the Taylor Swift Eras tour.
By Thursday afternoon, some were accepting their fate.
"I think I've given up hope," said Shannon Bernard of New Orleans, after exhausting all efforts toward buying tickets.
Both Bernard and her husband tried for the access codes and were wait-listed.
"My daughter is 7 and is a Taylor Swift fan," she said. "My husband and I wanted to take our daughter to create a big memory for us all."
Haleigh Bourque, a Lafayette native who lives in Dallas now, was able to purchase tickets for the New Orleans Eras Tour.
Even so, Bernard is trying to look on the bright side.
"We'll just have to try another year. I don't even know how much the tickets were. We were concerned if this would be in the thousands and the cost of a Disney trip," she said. "Would we want to go to Disney or see Taylor Swift?"
While legions of fans hoping to go to one of the concerts were "wait-listed," along with Bernard, by Ticketmaster last week, the chosen few (anointed by the internet) received codes granting them the privilege to buy tickets.
The face value of tickets varies and may seem steep. For example, a Lafayette couple was able to buy four floor tickets for $1,788, which may sound like a lot to the Tay-Tay uninitiated. However, once the resellers get involved, single tickets can go for thousands of dollars.
Haleigh Bourque, a Lafayette native who lives in Dallas now, is the lucky recipient of one of those tickets.
"Everyone in the world I knew got wait-listed except for one friend and her husband," she said. "So we enlisted him to buy the four tickets."
For the first round of tickets for the Eras tour, Bourque waited online seven hours — while at work (largely hiding in the nursing mother's room). (She doesn't work there anymore, for the record.)
"Those of us in the Swiftie community refer to buying those tickets as 'The Great War,'" Bourque said. "They were side view, but we got them."
Many experienced concertgoers have been humbled by the Taylor Swift Eras concert ticket-buying experience.
"I thought I could maneuver any ticket system on the planet, and I was very wrong," said former Louisiana resident, Susan Gonzalez, from her home in California, who was trying to plan a trip back to New Orleans to visit friends and see Taylor.
Gonzalez was willing to pay extra for a recent Taylor Swift show and believed she was going through a reputable ticket reseller — and was scammed, not to recover her money.
"Cheap is a relative term when it comes to this concert," said Jaci Russo in Lafayette.
Molli Russo, left, and Jaci Russo attended the Taylor Swift Eras Tour in Nashville.
Russo, who worked for Ticketmaster for years, was among the throngs of social media sad faces unable to work any magic to get a code for tickets. By 3:30 Thursday afternoon, Russo was still on the waitlist and said chances for tickets were looking pretty slim.
With each person with an access code able to buy four tickets, Russo said that a friend had offered an extra $500 per ticket, plus ticket price, for anyone able to buy tickets, but only needing two.
"That would still be less than it would cost to go through a reseller," Russo said. "This new system is very frustrating. They need to find a way to keep the tickets just for fans."
Her suggestion: Give fan club members access to codes to buy the tickets, which are mailed to homes within 200 miles of concert venues.
Like many others vying for tickets, Russo has her own horror story of getting tickets during "The Great War." Russo said getting tickets for the Houston show was a 26-hour process. She did it for her youngest daughter, who is a big fan. Russo tagged along with her daughter and says the experience was "transformative."
"After going, I’m a Swiftie for life," she said.
Later, she was able to snag two tickets for the Eras concert in Nashville as well.
Lindsey Mumey attended the Taylor Swift Eras Tour in Houston April 22.
While some fans are anxiously waiting for that precious email or text saying they'll get a code, Lindsey Mumey decided to control her own destiny. She attended the Houston show in April, but her purse was stolen in the middle of the show, so she felt like she needed a do-over of her favorite artist.
In July, she heard a rumor that Swift might be adding a second leg to the Eras tour. Once the additional concerts were official, she registered for presale codes for New Orleans, Paris and Dublin — just for the fun of it, not thinking she would actually get a code for either of the European shows.
Turns out, fate was on her side. She didn't receive a code for a date in the Big Easy, but she did for Paris and Dublin — considering the way prices are going for New Orleans, the cost might be about the same.
"After I thought about the numbers, I realized there was maybe a 2% chance of getting a code to the second U.S. leg shows," Mumey said. "So I looked to see if there were tickets still available in Dublin, since I had the code already, and figured the demand would be much lower, which it was."
So, on June 30, 2024, Mumey will get a head start on the local Swifties and mark off a new country on her bucket list. She will see Swift in Dublin and visit Europe for the first time.
"She's my favorite artist on the planet, and this is my dream concert. So, I said, 'I'm just gonna do it!,'" Mumey said.
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August 11, 2023 at 05:30AM
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Many Louisiana Swifties lose hope for New Orleans concert tickets after being waitlisted - NOLA.com
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