When Taylor Swift superfan Marie Oleinik went to see her idol perform last month in New Jersey, she blacked out.
“The concert was great, but I don’t remember anything,” she told The Irish Times. “It’s such an emotional experience, you can’t believe you’re there and suddenly it’s done.”
After Swift on Tuesday announced 50 concerts between August 2023 and 2024, spanning five continents, Oleinik went on Twitter to share advice about getting a coveted ticket. Within just 20 hours her tweets were viewed 2.5 million times. The response from her fellow Swifties? Appreciation from some, anxiety and antagonism from others.
“I got death threats for some of these tips, you know?” she said, laughing at the situation. “People said: ‘You’re going to hell for this, why are you ruining everybody’s chances by sharing this sacred information?’”
The 27-year-old Russian music journalist, who lives in Bulgaria, experienced first-hand the difficulty in securing a ticket.
“I’m a big fan and I go to concerts a lot, so I always buy tickets,” she explained. “I’m used to high-demand shows but that was like nothing I experienced before. That was crazy.”
Soon this chaos will fall upon the pop star’s Irish fans, after Swift announced two back-to-back shows at the Aviva Stadium on Friday, June 28th and Saturday, June 29th, 2024. The Eras Tour, which traverses the star’s 10-album career, has been praised highly by fans and critics alike, and there’s little doubt that the shows will be a highlight for many.
Tickets for the shows will go on sale on Thursday, July 13th at 10am. However, fans can register for tickets in advance until Friday, June 23rd at 11.59pm through Ticketmaster. There is information on Swift’s website. Registered fans who receive a unique code will have first access to purchase tickets on July 13th at 10am.
There is already a huge rush to book hotels in Dublin for the concerts. On Wednesday afternoon, The Irish Times found 146 locations to book a room through Booking.com for Friday, June 30th, 2023, averaging about €200-€400 per night. In comparison, on Friday, June 28th, 2024, when Swift is due to perform her first Dublin concert, there were just 11 locations available on the website. Some locations were offering €1,450 for two adults in bunk beds, another for €1,000, or a double bed at a hostel for €844.
Reacting to reports of price increases on the dates of Swift’s concerts in Dublin, Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan said it was “shocking” and “not right”.
“We have a real issue when you get that sort of pricing and that does a lot of reputational damage to the city and the country,” he said. “It’s a very hard thing to regulate. If someone wants to sell something at that price, there’s not an easy way you can come in and say, ‘No you can’t’. But I think for the industry it’s a real problem because very quickly you get the reputation of being extortionate and you lose your business.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Tourism said while the industry has been impacted by inflation and the shortage of accommodation due to the housing of Ukrainians in private accommodation, “there seems to be an increasing spike in the frequency and scale of price spikes in the accommodation sector, often coinciding with concerts and sporting events ... While a reduction in the available supply creates the conditions for price rises, prices only rise because individual businesses make the decisions to put their prices up and all businesses need to be cognisant of the long-term impact of excessive pricing.”
Securing your ticket
For her battle to get a ticket last November, Oleinik recalled how she waited in line behind thousands of others before snapping one up. So from a veteran Swifty (since Red came out in 2012, she said), what can fans do to maximise their chances of securing a ticket?
1. Register for presale: “My first advice would be to register before the deadline on Friday evening. Once you register, you should complete the details on your Ticketmaster account.”
2. Add more than one method of payment: “It’s good to add card details in advance,” she said. Oleinik’s foreign cards weren’t accepted for Ticketmaster in the US, so a PayPal account was the fallback that saved her. “[Ticketmaster] normally give you five to seven minutes to complete the purchase, and if you don’t complete it, the tickets get released back into the sale.”
3. Stable internet connection: “Try not to refresh the page and make sure your internet connection is stable on the day.”
4. Pull up the source code: To see how far back you are in the waiting list, Ticketmaster normally won’t indicate how far back you are past 2,000 people, she said. “If you pull up the [source] code, by right clicking, you can see the actual number and there were over 10,000 people ahead of me.”
5. Pick a budget beforehand: “I would advise people to think what’s the most they’re willing to pay and add some more in case of any hidden fees.”
6. If no luck, keep refreshing: “If you don’t get tickets right away, keep refreshing for like 40 minutes to an hour. There will be a lot of people who will get their tickets in the basket, the sale will not go through, and those tickets will go back into the sale.”
7. Location doesn’t matter: “Don’t get too obsessed on getting as close to the stage as you can get because the stage is really big, you’ll get a good view regardless of where you are and she moves so much and interacts with every section of the stadium.”
8. There’s always resale tickets: “Don’t get too heartbroken if you don’t manage to get tickets. The shows are more than a year away so there will be plenty of opportunities to buy them from resellers.”
“I think Swift fans are amazing,” she said. “They’re so dedicated and they will do whatever it takes to go to these shows. But I think they can be a bit intense. A lot of people have been really rude to me for sharing the tips. I guess my takeaway would be to try not to see other dedicated fans as competition because resellers will try to capitalise on [these concerts].”
