Demand high as ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Toronto shows begin today

Tickets for Taylor Swift’s recently announced Toronto shows on her Eras tour go on sale Wednesday.

Swift will be playing six shows at the Rogers Centre next November, the only shows in Canada in 2024. The first two dates — Nov. 14 and 15 — go on sale at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET, while the other dates follow in pairs on Thursday and Friday.

Anyone looking to get tickets would have already had to pre-register by Aug. 5 through Ticketmaster’s verified fan program, a process designed to manage demand, filter bots and avoid high-priced tickets.

Vancouver’s Callista Ryan was one of the lucky fans who made it through that process.

“I was leaving the gym and I just opened my phone and I saw a text come through that I had gotten the code to get a ticket,” she said. “I was very excited. I almost yelled out in the locker room.”

One fan got Taylor Swift tickets in Toronto. The other didn’t

A tale of two Swifties: hear from one fan who secured four tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour Toronto show in 2024, and another who was waitlisted.

Many fans placed on waitlist

Even after getting the code, Ryan still had to navigate through the process of buying the tickets online.

“It was actually quite stressful on the Ticketmaster site, because you click a ticket, you go to purchase and then boom, someone’s already got those tickets,” she said.

Ryan was eventually able to secure four tickets, and estimates she spent around $2,000 in total. She plans to take her mom to the show, and make a family trip out of the event.

“I was 10 years old when the Fearless album came out. And now I’m 25. And so throughout my childhood to my young adult years, Taylor Swift has been there,” she said.

Not everyone who applied had the same experience, as many fans across the country were placed on a waitlist.

“I know about 30 people who all got waitlisted,” fan Tuba Chishti told CBC News Network on Wednesday. Chishti herself was placed on the waitlist.

Others also signed up for RBC’s Avion Rewards program, allowing fans to access a group of Swift tickets — even if they aren’t clients of the bank. These tickets will be available on Aug. 15, and fans will be limited to four per sale.

These Swifties got waitlisted for tickets — but they’re still hopeful

Two major Taylor Swift fans explain what they’re going to do after failing to get a code to buy tickets for the pop superstar’s Toronto shows.

Chisthi is hoping to secure tickets through the waitlist or through Avion Rewards, but says if all else fails, she has a backup plan.

“I know it’s November and it can be a little cold, but not that cold by Canadian standards. So I’m hoping that [the Rogers Centre] is open and at least we can do the parking lot experience,” she said.

‘A once-in-a-lifetime experience’

Montreal-based fan Samara O’Gorman was put on the waitlist as well. She told News Network that she understands costs will likely be high, particularly for people travelling to Toronto for the show.

“We’re not paying for a concert at this point. I think it’s very much an experience, and a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she said.

Pascal Courty, an economics professor at the University of Victoria, says he isn’t surprised by the demand.

“[Swift] would have to give so many concerts to make everybody happy. And there’s a limited number of dates she can perform,” he said.

“Courty says artists like Swift could charge more for tickets and still sell out, but that they want to give more fans an opportunity to see their shows.

“There’s going to be money left on the table,” he said. “And it means that not everybody will be able to get a ticket.”

Challenge of preventing ticket scalping

The challenge, Courty says, is ensuring that fans are the ones who get those tickets without scalpers scooping them up to resell at inflated prices.

“Some people will try to slide in, and they don’t want to go to the concert, but they realize that they can buy low and sell high,” he said. “That’s another reason why there would be massive demand and it would be hard to manage.”

Courty says he thinks the verified fan process likely helps prevent some of those people “from just grabbing money.” But he also noted that other methods could completely eliminate scalping.

Courty says one way to deter it is to make tickets nominative, like airline tickets, where people have to declare a name at the time of purchase.

Taylor Swift fans in N.L. eagerly waiting for Eras Tour ticket sale

The CBC’s Talia Kliot — a Taylor Swift fan herself — headed to the Avalon Mall in St. John’s to see how people are getting ready for Swift’s return to Canada in November 2024.

“In the event something happens to you, you can’t show up anymore at the last minute, you give the ticket back,” he said, noting that in that scenario, someone new would be drawn from a virtual line, and people could access the venue only if they had a ticket and matching ID.

“That system would completely prevent resale for profits because there’s no way for this third party to slide in,” Courty said, since they would only be able to transfer tickets back to the primary seller.

CBC News has reached out to Ticketmaster about rules around reselling tickets for Swift’s Toronto shows.

A number of resale tickets for Swift’s Wednesday show in Inglewood, Calif., were listed on the platform StubHub with prices starting around $1,150.