Ticketmaster issues? Taylor Swift’s opener Gayle quips she doesn’t have a ticket either
Taylor Swift’s opening act, Gayle, joked to reporters backstage at Friday night’s iHeartRadio Music Festival that she has “no tickets,” apparently referring to her recent troubles with the concert-tickets company, also known as Ticketmaster, after the company removed a Taylor Swift concert she’d purchased before her concert at this year’s Grammys on Sunday.
The comment made by Gayle, who replaced Swift onstage, drew laughter from the audience at the annual event in Las Vegas. “I don’t have any ticket,” she told reporters, and responded when asked if she still has tickets: “I told you, I don’t have tickets — I don’t have tickets.”
Ticketmaster has issued a formal apology to Swift for the fiasco. “We have apologized and will rectify our mistake when we can,” a Ticketmaster rep told The Associated Press on Friday.
The company told Billboard Friday that the tickets purchased for Swift’s concert were sold on the secondary market and not sold directly by Ticketmaster. Tickets were not on-sale when they went on sale, and Ticketmaster issued a refund to Swift after the singer’s agent raised the issue with the company.
The company issued a statement on Friday saying that it sincerely regrets that its actions caused an “unnecessary distraction” for Swift and her team. The concert ticket site, however, did not do the same.
Swift’s problems with the company might be traced back more than a year.
In December 2016, Swift’s agent sent Ticketmaster a message saying that the company was canceling the ticket for her “Taylor Swift: Lover” show. A rep for Ticketmaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ticket situation.
Swift had originally purchased the ticket through the secondary market for $3,000, but it was apparently sold to another buyer for $3,900 before the company took action. Swift confirmed that the secondary ticket was sold on Twitter. But since the company removed the concert ticket, she said, she had no choice but to buy a higher premium ticket from the secondary market.
The second-tier ticket bought by Swift was for the same venue, which held Swift’s final show of