Taylor Swift's Minnesota fans riled by concert ticket program for U.S. Bank Stadium show

Some fans who "boost­ed" their chan­ces for bet­ter seats got stick­er shock.

December 9, 2017 at 3:05AM
Taylor Swift performs in Austin, Texas in 2016.
Taylor Swift performs in Austin, Texas in 2016. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Min­ne­so­ta fans' mad love for Tay­lor Swift is turn­ing into bad blood in some cases now that early tick­ets to her Sept. 1 U.S. Bank Stadium con­cert are on sale and caus­ing wide­spread stick­er shock.

Many die-hards and/or giv­ing par­ents who got in on the sing­er's Ver­i­fied Fan pre-sale pro­gram — os­ten­si­bly a means to fight tick­et scalp­ers — faced the di­lem­ma of pay­ing $795 or $447 for VIP pack­ag­es with tick­ets in prime lo­ca­tions, or else $87-$153 plus fees for seats in the up­per reach­es of the 65,000-ca­pac­i­ty sta­di­um.

Just get­ting the first crack at buy­ing Swift's tick­ets cost a lot of time and en­er­gy.

The sing­er's Tick­et­mas­ter-gen­er­ated Ver­i­fied Fan pro­gram re­quired sev­er­al weeks of jump­ing through hoops to get "boost­ed" to the front of the vir­tual line. Fans could earn boosts by buy­ing her al­bum in dif­fer­ent for­mats, watch­ing her videos or post­ing Swift-re­lated selfies.

Af­ter all that, the ver­i­fied Swift fans were giv­en a spe­cif­ic one-hour win­dow to log on and buy tick­ets start­ing this week. And that's when they first got a load of the com­plexi­ties and prices.

"I guess my teen­age girls are going to be dis­ap­point­ed," said Lance Schwartz of Man­kato, who was giv­en a buy­ing win­dow Thurs­day night.

Schwartz was left with the op­tion of buy­ing the $447-plus VIP pack­age or pay­ing $150 for "ob­struct­ed view" seats.He opt­ed not to buy any­thing.

A fan who spent "hours upon hours" try­ing to get boost­ed in the Ver­i­fied Fan pro­gram, Alyssa Pelish joined the cho­rus of com­plaints on Twit­ter.

"Wasn't the i­de­a of this so that tick­et scalp­ers couldn't do this to fans that have been there since the be­gin­ning?" Pelish tweet­ed as @AlyssaRelish, not­ing that the $795 "pit tick­et" near the stage was half her month­ly sal­a­ry.

VIP pack­ag­es in­clud­ed such extras as a book of Swift's po­et­ry and a lami­nated pass — which doesn't ac­tu­al­ly get you back­stage. These pack­ag­es were list­ed on Tick­et­mas­ter for the Min­ne­ap­olis show for $447 to $1,498.

"RIP my bank ac­count," tweet­ed a fan with the Swift-re­lated han­dle @oncebelonged2me.

U.S. Bank Stadium rep­re­sen­ta­tives said fans can opt out of the VIP pack­ag­es and still buy tick­ets in the stan­dard $50-$225 price range, in­clud­ing many seats sold out­side the Ver­i­fied Fan pre-sale pro­gram, start­ing Dec. 13 via Tick­et­mas­ter.

USBS staff de­clined a re­quest to pro­vide a map or guide to the dif­fer­ent tick­et tiers — what's be­ing charged where — in the pub­lic­ly fund­ed sta­di­um.

In a state­ment sent to the Los An­ge­les Times, Swift's team de­fend­ed the pro­gram as a way to re­ward the most loy­al fans: "If these same tick­ets were of­fered on the open mar­ket, scalp­ers would snatch them up and fans would be pay­ing thou­sands of dol­lars for them," the sing­er's rep­re­sen­ta­tives said.

Of course, scalp­ers are still hav­ing their way. Stubhub.com al­read­y has hun­dreds of tick­ets list­ed for the Sept. 1 con­cert, rang­ing from $150 nose­bleed seats to $450 low­er-level tick­ets to $1,200-$3,500 for floor ac­cess.

Plenty of Twin Cities fans did land de­cent seats, though, and said they were hap­py with the pro­gram.

"I'M SCREAM­ING I CAN'T WAIT," tweet­ed 20-year-old fan Moana (@afemalediety), who glad­ly paid $450 for a VIP pack­age with a floor tick­et.

Ted Cheesebrough, who reg­u­lar­ly buys con­cert tick­ets, ap­plaud­ed Swift's anti-scalp­ing ef­forts af­ter he wound up with $160 seats in a low­er level. He be­lieves he im­proved his chan­ces play­ing along with the boost­ing game.

"It was a no-brainer in ord­er to get bet­ter seats for my kids and I," said Cheesebrough. "It was a little corny, but I didn't care. I am a little corny, too — and, frank­ly, so is Tay­lor Swift."

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658

@ChrisRstrib

about the writer

Chris Riemenschneider

Critic / Reporter

Chris Riemenschneider has been covering the Twin Cities music scene since 2001, long enough for Prince to shout him out during "Play That Funky Music (White Boy)." The St. Paul native authored the book "First Avenue: Minnesota's Mainroom" and previously worked as a music critic at the Austin American-Statesman in Texas.

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