The ticketing giant is staggering on-sale dates and registration windows to accommodate demand.
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| Beyoncé performs on stage headlining the Grand Reveal of Dubai’s newest luxury hotel, Atlantis The Royal on January 21, 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images |
Ticketmaster is back in the spotlight, as tickets for Beyoncé’s upcoming Renaissance tour go on sale on the platform in the coming days.
This will be a big test for the ticketing giant, following the long wait times and technical glitches the site experienced
during the presales for Taylor Swift’s tour in November. The issues
sparked congressional pushback and hearings, vitriol among fans, several
of whom filed a lawsuit against the ticketing giant, and pushback from
Swift, who said she had been assured the platform could “handle this
kind of demand.”
In his statement during the Jan. 24 congressional hearing on
the matter, Live Nation President and CFO Joe Berchtold blamed bots and
cyber attacks for the problems during the Swift’s presale. The bots
failed to acquire tickets, he said, but dealing with the attacks slowed
down the site. He promised the company would do better.
“The recent onsale experience with Taylor Swift, one of the world’s
most popular artists, has highlighted the need to address these issues
urgently. We knew bots would attack that onsale and planned accordingly.
We were then hit with three times the amount of bot traffic than we’d
ever experienced. And for the first time in 400 verified fan onsales,
they came after our Verified Fan password servers as well,” Berchtold
said.
“This is what led to a terrible consumer experience, which we deeply
regret. We apologize to the fans. We apologize to Miss Swift. We need to
do better and we will do better,” he added.
Demand is also expected to be high for the Renaissance tour, which is Beyonce’s
first solo tour in more than six years. It begins on May 10, 2023 in
Europe, before continuing to North America, with stops in Toronto,
Chicago, East Rutherford, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Houston and
other cities. Live Nation is the promoter of the tour, and is owned by the same parent company as Ticketmaster.
To help accommodate some of the demand, Ticketmaster said it is
staggering sale dates and using its Verified Fan system to power sales
for the North American leg of the tour. The registration process is also
slightly different this time, as windows for the Verified Fan sales
close at different times depending on the selected city.
“It’s expected there will be more demand than there are tickets
available and a lottery-style process will determine which registered
Verified Fans receive a unique access code for the sale and which are
put on the waitlist,” Ticketmaster said.
During the Swift presale, which followed a similar Verified Fan selection system, Live Nation
CEO Michael Rapino said that 3.5 million fans registered and 1.5
million were selected to buy tickets. Ticketmaster sold two million
tickets during the Swift presale, a record for a single artist in a day,
but continued to experience technical issues with its Capital One sale
the next day due to high demand. The company then canceled the general sale on Nov. 17.
Tickets for the Renaissance tour go on sale in North America starting
Feb. 6, with Verified Fan presales for BeyHive members and Citi credit
card holders. There is also a presale for Verizon mobile customers.
