The Tamesis
Thirty minutes before advance tickets went on sale for Harry Styles’ “Together, Together” tour at Madison Square Garden this week, I sat nervously at my desk.
I’m No. 11,173 in Ticketmaster’s online waiting room queue (which can be a real game of dice if you’re familiar with concert ticketing platforms), and the palm of my hand is sweating. What if my page crashes and I lose my spot in the queue? What if my network freezes? What if I don’t have any tickets left after I actually enter the main site? The pressure is existI wasn’t particularly hopeful.
This is nothing new: In recent years, buying tickets to see your favorite artists in concert—from Beyoncé to Taylor Swift to Oasis—has begun to feel like playing the Hunger Games. Not only are you competing for the same limited seats with thousands of die-hard fans, many of whom are happy to travel overseas to see the show (they call it show travel), but you also have to overcome a host of technical hurdles. Hot tours have been known to crash the Ticketmaster site, and the platform collapses under the weight of fan demand—sometimes, even if you do get a ticket, Ticketmaster will accuse you of being a bot and immediately cancel your purchase.
It’s a far cry from the early glory days, when you could save a few hundred dollars, log on online, and simply click “buy.” i see britney spears this Princess of Pop, by her side circus 2009 tour Under $300— Easily purchased tickets over a spotty internet connection from my home in rural Canada. Now, you have to approach the sale date like an assassin and have a very clear course of action (basically, you must Grab the first seat you see), reliable WiFi, and of course, have your credit card ready. After all, every second counts: you only have a few minutes to check out before the system checks Kick You’re out – assuming you were lucky enough to get that far in the first place.
As the line in my Harry Styles waiting room dwindled to the 1,000 people in front of me—a few more minutes I figured, no need to wait any longer – I checked out what other Stylers had to say about the process online. Of course, many were frustrated by the long wait times and especially angry at how expensive tickets were this time around (up to $1,000 per ticket). “I can’t justify spending my entire paycheck on two concert tickets,” one user wrote. Others were frustrated by the site freezing while trying to buy.
Then, I was in all of a sudden. I took a quick look at the seating map and shockingly, there were no seats left. Nothing is left! Not even the extremely expensive ones.
It’s no secret that concert tickets are driven by a corrupt capitalist system. Ultimately, artists and venues do not real Care about being fair to their fans; they just want to make money. But new laws are slowly being implemented to curb the trend. In 2024, the House passed the TICKETS Act, which would require sellers to list the total cost of tickets (including hidden fees) before checkout and require secondary sellers to provide refunds to customers if a show is canceled.
Defeated, I lingered on the “Together, Together” Ticketmaster page, ready to accept my fate. Maybe I’ll try my luck again on a general sale date. Maybe I need faster WiFi speeds, or multiple tabs open to roll the dice further. However, the show is currently sold out. But the battle isn’t over yet, Harry fans: don’t lose hope! There are still a lot of dates yet to be released (he’s on multiple dates in multiple cities, after all.) Play the waiting game, Be preparedyou might——perhaps——Being able to see the superstars on stage. Oh, maybe change your modem.
