Taylor Swift made history performing to her largest ever crowd on the first night of her Eras Tour in Australia, but some observant ‘Swifties’ have questioned why so many stadium seats were empty.
Fans who were lucky enough to score a seat at the sell-out show took to social media to share images of hundreds of empty seats throughout the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Taylor Swift hit the stage just after 7pm on Friday night for the first show of her Australian leg of the tour to a staggering crowd of 96,000 concert goers. ‘Losing my mind at there being 96,000 people here. This is the biggest show that we’ve ever done.
I’m fully starstruck by the fact so many people wanted to hang out with us on a Friday night in Melbourne!’ But one disappointed music fan posted a series of images revealing nearly two whole sections of the stadium were empty during the performance.
‘A bit upset to see so many empty blocks of seats,’ she posted on Facebook. ‘I hope they are empty for a good reason.’ Some social media users suggested the images were simply taken before the star took to the stage and people had arrived.
However, former Triple M radio announcer James Anderson shared images of during Swift’s performance which showed hundreds of empty seats. ‘Pictures just in: Empty seats spotted for tonight’s Taylor Swift concert. Ticketek are firing up the queue system shortly,’ he said in a Facebook post.
The images also showed dozens of other empty seats scattered throughout the stands. Swifties who missed out on seeing the sell-out show voiced their disappointment, with many suggesting they would be happy to sit in seats with obstructed views just to hear the singer live.
‘I would sit behind the stage, just to be there,’ one fan wrote. ‘I would totally sit in those seats … They are better than nothing,’ another commented. ‘I could be sitting there!’ One mother commented the photos were ‘so sad when I’ve almost had to sell my soul to try and get tickets for my two girls ages 11 and 10 with no luck’.
Other Tay Tay fans were quick to reason with disappointed Melbourne fans, telling them it was a ‘full house’ by the time Swift took the stage.