TicketMaster Puts New Regulations On Olivia Rodrigo Tickets After Disaster Presale

  • By: Brianna Rose Hewitt

Ticketmaster is just a bad idea, right…

Have you ever heard someone utter the words “I love Ticketmaster?” The answer is,”No.” You haven’t. 

The company owned by Live Nation is the definition of a monopoly as responsible for 70% of ticket sales in the US. But unlike the artists it sells tickets for, it does not have many fans. As a result, Ticketmaster is putting new regulations in place for Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS World Tour. 

Rodrigo announced her world tour less than a week after releasing her sophomore album Guts. Up until Sunday, Sept. 17 fans could register for both the American Express Early Access presale and General Presale, which happened Wednesday and Thursday of this week. 

Much to the fandom’s dismay, only a small percentage were giving presale access codes, with the rest being put on the waitlist. Even after Rodrigo’s team added 20 additional dates to the tour, making a grand total of 77 stops, the demand was not met.

Ticketmaster released on their website claiming, “There has been massive fan demand for Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS World Tour, and even after the tour added 20 additional dates to meet the demand, there are still more fans who registered than there are tickets available.”

Olivia Rodrigo Guts World Tour

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For the lucky few who got presale codes, many took to social media to describe their experience as a blood bath and/or a disappointment. It was originally advertised that tickets would range from $50 to $200, but when fans made it to the front of the queue, they were met with prices from $500 to over $900 dollars. Even nosebleed seats were over $200 after fees. 

Now that the presale is over, the ticketing site has made a few announcements. Fans who purchased tickets will not receive them until three days prior to their show, and there will only be electronic delivery. Ticketmaster set these new guidelines with the hopes to curb scalper activity and high resale prices.

Ticketmaster set these actions following backlash from the ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, which resulted in a high amount of bot activity on the site buying up tickets and resale prices reaching as high as $11,000. 

Leave it to Taylor Swift to make anything possible as her anger and addressing the issues resulted in Ticketmaster having to appear in front of the United States Congress to explain the issues. 

Joe Berchtold, president and CFO of Live Nation explained that there was over three times bot traffic that was expected. 

“In hindsight there are several things we could have done better – including staggering the sales over a longer period of time and doing a better job setting fan expectations for getting tickets,” he said in a statement. “We apologize to the fans. We apologize to Ms. Swift. We need to do better, and we will do better.” 

We guess that this is TicketMaster’s definition of “doing better,” but fans throughout the week have blasted the site for not only being slow with communications about the presale, but the glitches and prices that happened during it.

Emails regarding codes were not sent until after 10 p.m. PST the day before the sales, and many complained their payment options would not load after selecting tickets. 

@nataninixon @Ticketmaster how could you do me like this. 😞 #gutsoliviarodrigo #gutstour #oliviarodrigo #gutsworldtour ♬ get him back – speduptayrey⸆⸉

Overall message, Ticketmaster still has a lot of work to do if it wants to be loved by the public. While resale prices are not Taylor Swift level yet, fans are already disappointed with their GUTS Tour experience and a simple apology may not fix this.

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