Buying Taylor Swift tickets or on waitlist? What to do, and not, to help your chances

Are you ready for it, Swifties?

You either went to bed elated that you received a Verified Fan confirmation email from Ticketmaster, with its coveted access code, that allowed you to join the queue Wednesday for a shot at tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour in Miami.

Or, like thousands of us with teardrops on our guitars, and everywhere else, you were placed on a waitlist, which means you weren’t selected by the random Ticketmaster program and could not join the queue Wednesday.

Shake it off? You know that’s not what any fan’s going to do.

Swift is performing Oct. 18, 19 and 20, 2024, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens.

The record-setting three-hour stadium extravaganza prompted piano man legend Billy Joel to make a bold comparison on Swift’s musical appeal and the demand to see her tour.

“The only thing I can compare it to is the phenomenon of Beatlemania,” Joel, who attended Swift’s show with his family in Tampa in April, told the New York Times.

When tickets for the first leg of Swift’s Eras Tour went on sale last November, Ticketmaster was deluged with 3.5 billion system requests, four times its usual peak, according to Ticketmaster’s website. The demand, many from bots, crashed the website. More than two million tickets were sold on Nov. 15, a record number.

The website modified the sales format for this new North American leg, including staggered sales times during the day for multiple shows in one city, like Miami.

Here’s what you should know about buying tickets for The Eras Tour:

What if I got an access code?

You have a chance to buy four tickets with the access code for the show date you pre-selected in the Verified Fan registration period that ended last Saturday.

▪ The virtual waiting room opens 30 minutes before the sale begins so be signed in so you can get “in line.”

▪ Sales are staggered for this round of Eras Tour tickets. Last time all the days went on sale simultaneously and that caused Ticketmaster’s site to crash.

Here’s how it will go Wednesday:

▪ If you want, and registered, to buy tickets for the opening date of the new North American tour leg, Friday, Oct. 18, you’re in line at 11 a.m.

▪ If you opted for Saturday, Oct. 19 show, you are in line at 1 p.m.

▪ If you chose Sunday, Oct. 20, your sale began at 3 p.m.

When you reach the end of the queue, you can buy one to four tickets.

Tips:

▪ Don’t refresh the page while you are waiting in the virtual queue, Ticketmaster suggests. So hard to resist, but don’t do it. You could lose your place in line.

▪ Make sure you have logged into into your Ticketmaster account that received the access code to buy Verified Fan tickets. If you just pull up Ticketmaster.com and aren’t signed in to your account, the link you received won’t work.

We know a lucky strategist who has her code and who has done the Taylor Swift Eras Tour Ticketmaster ticket dance twice, for Tampa tickets and an upcoming Ireland show. Miami will be her third time if she gets tickets Wednesday. Like a military strategist, she researched how fast browsers are and has told her husband he needs to take their daughter to her appointments Wednesday because she will not leave the house and her faster 5G network there to “sit at Starbucks where their WiFi is slower.”

This may help. She has debated using her laptop or the Ticketmaster app on her phone that matches her account and determined the website on laptop may be more reliable.

▪ So multiple browers? Know this: “Using multiple browsers will not improve your chances of scoring tickets,” Ticketmaster warned on Monday. “You may even be prevented from accessing the sale across multiple browsers.”

Am I guaranteed tickets if I got an access code?

Demand is so high for Swift’s Eras Tour that only a small percentage of fans will score tickets via the official Verified Fans site. Expect a quick sellout in Miami, which hasn’t hosted a Taylor Swift concert since her Reputation Tour sold out the 65,000-seat Hard Rock Stadium in August 2018.

What if you’re on the waitlist?

Most fans received the dreaded “You’re on the waitlist but hang tight” email from Ticketmaster on Tuesday. “There won’t be enough tickets for everyone who registered so a limited number of registered Verified Fans received a unique access code and others were placed on the waitlist. If any tickets remain, we may message you to join the Verified Fan on-sale,” Ticketmaster told fans in an emailed waitlist letter.

Tickets remaining? There’s a better chance of Swift inviting her former Big Machine label head Scooter Braun on stage to sing a duet of “You Belong With Me” than you getting that lucky to move off the waitlist.

Only Verified Fans who got the access code can join the on-sale queue. Don’t attempt to join with just a waitlist sans code. Won’t work.

Can I transfer my access code?

Codes can’t be purchased or transferred, Ticketmaster said. “Your access code is unique to your individual account. Do not trust anyone trying to sell you a code — it will not work,” Ticketmaster said in its email to registered fans who received a code or a waitlist assignment on Tuesday.

Bought my tickets ahead of the Ticketmaster sale. Am I good?

“No tickets are sold before the Verified Fan on-sale. Beware of ticket listings on unofficial sites — they’re not legit!” Ticketmaster said.

How do I transfer tickets to others via Ticketmaster?

Let’s say you managed to buy four tickets to one of the Miami dates. You only need two for you and your daughter, perhaps. You’d like to give or sell two to someone else, say a friend or a family member.

Ticketmaster’s help center has these instructions on its transfer tickets page on how to receive and accept a transfer.

How to send tickets:

▪ Open the Ticketmaster app and sign into your account.

▪ Tap My Events and select the event to view your tickets.

▪ Tap Transfer. If the Transfer button is grayed out, your tickets aren’t eligible for transfer.

▪ Select the tickets you’d like to transfer and tap Transfer To.

▪ Enter your recipient’s information, including their mobile number or email address. If a mobile number is entered, a link to claim the ticket will pop up with a pre-written text message. Press send and it will go to your recipient. If an email address is entered, a link to claim the ticket will go to your recipient in an email.

▪ Tap Transfer Ticket.

If you’ve done it correctly, you’ll get an email that the transfer was accepted.

How to accept transferred tickets:

To accept transferred tickets sign in or create a Ticketmaster account and you should see the tickets in My Events. Once you accept them, the sender gets a notice.

What if I want to sell Swift tickets on StubHub?

You will start to see tickets for sale on StubHub, if you haven’t already.

Given the demand for Swift’s Eras Tour and how fast tickets sell out in every city, StubHub, an online ticket marketplace where people buy and sell tickets to events, has seen a huge uptake of interest in sales.

According to Ticketmaster, about 5% of the 2.4 million tickets sold for the first leg of the tour were sold or posted for resale on the secondary market — about 120,000 tickets. Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium was a site for the tour’s first leg in April.

In an email to the Miami Herald, Stub Hub said the great majority of sellers for Swift’s Eras Tour, about 83%, were first-time sellers. A spokesperson said that as a result of the unprecedented interest in this tour, StubHub launched “additional proactive measures and policies to help support both buyers and sellers and mitigate any issues.”

How can tickets appear for sale before official date?

Some have complained about “bad agents” selling tickets on secondary markets even before the Verified Ticketmaster sale. How can this be?

“Tickets may be available ahead of the public on-sale as there are people who have access to tickets before an official on-sale — whether they’re season ticket holders, sponsors, venues and artist personnel or other industry insiders,” StubHub said.

StubHub seller and buyer tips

If, like the majority, you were unsuccessful at securing tickets for the three Miami shows on the Verified Sale and were not plucked to Swiftland from the waitlist, you may be tempted to buy from a secondary market.

Be careful.

As for StubHub, “there’s no incentive for anyone to attempt to sell a ticket they don’t have, as they will not be paid unless the buyer gets into the event successfully,” StubHub says. “They can also be charged penalty fees and banned for any abuse of our policies.”

StubHub created a site for Taylor Swift Eras Tour given the interest. The page details seller and buyer tips and also safety measures at http://stubhub.com/tickettips

Selling above ticket price?

Selling tickets above face value once was illegal. Now it’s permissible, determined by supply and demand. “Just because a ticket is listed at a certain price does not mean it will sell at that price — it has to be priced at what the market will bear,” StubHub said.

Do prices settle on the resale market?

In general, the on-sale and the couple of weeks following are the peak moment for demand, and prices can reflect that until the market adjusts. Miami’s concerts are 14 months away.

How to avoid fraud and get better resale prices

▪ Don’t rush. Though we bet demand will stay high after this initial rush and a week or two before the October 2024 dates, you may find tickets in your budget. Consider single tickets because they are harder to sell. Perhaps weekday shows rather than weekend. These sometimes go for a lower price, StubHub says.

▪ Avoid buying off the street or on social media when you don’t know the person— use a trusted service. Don’t pay with cash, money transfer or payment apps since it’s harder or impossible to track your purchase — you may not be able to recoup your money if there are issues with the tickets. Pay Pal is a better idea because transactions can be tracked. Ticketmaster, as the official retailer, is safe. StubHub has security measures, like a FanProtect Guarantee that backs each purchase and claims to have accessible customer service when there’s an issue.

▪ Watch out for scams when you are not on a regulated site with a guarantee. Make sure you’re getting a link to an actual Ticketmaster mobile ticket from the seller. “If the deal is too good to be true, it’s probably not true,” StubHub says.

▪ Don’t give your credit card information over the phone to people you don’t know, according to a Ticketmaster blog that warns of scams.

▪ Ticketmaster says common scams include asking for an Amazon Gift Card, iTunes Gift Card, money order or any other third-party gift card as a form of payment in exchange for tickets.

▪ You may also be asked to wire funds as a form of payment in exchange for tickets or “to go to a store and buy a gift card.” Don’t do it.

▪ Ticketmaster suggests using mobile tickets, so be wary if someone wants to sell you a paper or printed ticket. They could be counterfeit. Mobile tickets sold through Ticketmaster have bar codes that continually refresh to help verify they are the real deal.

▪ When you do get your tickets digitally, download them to your phone’s wallet so they are readily accessed, even without an internet connection.

▪ If a seller is too eager to sell and asks you what dates you are looking for and that they have tickets for multiple dates, you need to calm down, to quote a “Lover” album hit you’re likely going to hear at the concert. This behavior sounds like a scam, says a Swiftie expert with the Cincinnati Enquirer. They should be able to tell you specifically upfront what day they have tickets for, how many, and what the seat numbers are.

▪ If a seller is selling too cheap, or below cost, and seems too excited, be wary. The tickets might not be real. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, seats for the Eras Tour cost between $49 to $449 before fees, with VIP packages ranging from $199 to $899.

▪ Ask a seller you don’t know or from an unregulated site to take a screen shot of the tickets they are sending via their Ticketmaster app at the time of your chat before you send them any form of payment. You can then have a better idea if the tickets are legit.

Where else is Eras Tour playing after Miami?

Miami’s series of three shows open the next North American leg in October 2024. Swift has several shows to complete in Europe before she hits South Florida.

After Miami, the newly added 2024 shows are in New Orleans on Oct. 25-27, at Caesars Superdome, and Nov. 1-3 in Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium. Also, six shows are at Toronto’s Rogers Center between Nov. 14 and Nov. 23.