On September 13th, pop singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo announced that she would be going on tour for her sophomore album, GUTS. Only 5 days after the release of this record, she booked 77 venues across North America and Europe, with 4 rotating opening acts. As Rodrigo has over 60 million monthly listeners on Spotify, the tour was anticipated to have high demand. The major issue for many fans was Ticketmaster’s inability to create a fair system that accommodated such a large number of people.
Ticketmaster, the largest global ticket-selling market, implemented a widely used system where fans could gain early access to tickets through two different pre-registered early access sales. American Express and Ticketmaster worked together to create the ‘American Express presale,’ which catered to Amex card users. Anyone who didn’t qualify for the Amex presale, but still wanted to get early access, could do so by signing up through the ‘Artist Registration presale’, which began a day later. Those who wanted to register could enter their email, phone number, and preferred concert venue to receive an email telling them if they were able to participate in their chosen presale.
The people who were chosen to participate weren’t necessarily guaranteed the joy of seeing Rodrigo live but were one step forward in comparison to the unregistered fans who were three steps back.
Quickly after the presales launched, it became increasingly difficult to purchase tickets as more were getting taken, prices were inflating, and Ticketmaster was crashing and bumping people out of line. However, Hazel Mohnkern ’26 told the Register Forum that signing up for the Amex presale made all the difference, leading to a successful outcome with reasonably priced tickets.
“We had a really easy experience because we used the American Express presale and we got to get tickets the day before everybody else.”
As the Amex presale began a day earlier, participants had the benefit of a larger amount of seats. The father of CRLS student Emily Nolan ’26, who registered through Artist Registration, shared his disappointing experience and difficulties of working through what was left, a day after the Amex presale.
“I either could not select the seats I wanted in time (seats were disappearing as I was trying to click them, which was also unnecessarily tricky), or once when I thought I had the right seats, they turned out to be over $500 a piece!”
It is evident that the benefits of registering in the American Express presale made it difficult for anyone who was not in possession of an Amex card, to buy tickets. Therefore, to improve the user experience, Ticketmaster needs to implement a system that gives fans equal opportunity to try and score tickets and can handle a large number of people, without crashing in the process. Instead of creating a segue to success that is only accomplished through specific criteria, there should be solely one pre-registered system that enables fans to go through the same process to get tickets. Even if this creates greater intensity, it shows Ticketmaster users that they genuinely care about creating equality and fairness for all.
