Mount Pleasant resident Katie Augustine was able to score four VIP floor tickets to see Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour for the relatively low price of $150 each — a feat nearly impossible to match in the U.S.
A “Swiftie” since middle school, Augustine’s determination to see the concert tour led her in 2023 to search for upcoming shows — but overseas. It was tough. Just to get a chance to buy a ticket, fans need to get through a lottery-like system. So Augustine sought tickets in several countries and succeeded for a show in Stockholm.
On May 18, she arrived at the venue in the Swedish capital and took her spot close to the stage, along with her boyfriend, her sister Allie and her brother-in-law.
When she bought the tickets in 2023, Augustine was thrilled to get them but uncertain exactly what they cost because the price shown on her just-created Swedish Ticketmaster account was in krona, (the Swedish currency) and she didn’t know the exchange rate.
At current rates, $150 U.S. is about 1,580 kronor, a total price that included fees.
“When I got them I had to walk outside because my heart was beating so fast,” Augustine said.
“There was no way I would get tickets in the U.S.” she said. “So we went to Sweden.”
Augustine did better than most Swift fans stateside have. In late 2022, a nonprofit in Greenville auctioned off four Taylor Swift tickets, plus hotel rooms, for a concert in Atlanta. The bids started at $2,500.
Others have had to open their wallets, too. Bailey Larkin, founder of the Taylor Swift fan club in Charleston, went to one of the Atlanta shows. She was able to get a pair of $300 floor seats by finding a relative who had a particular credit card, letting her tap the pool of tickets reserved for those cardholders.
“On the day of the show the seats right next to us were on sale for $4,000 each,” she said. “So I ended up talking to people next to me who paid $8,000 for two seats, and we had paid $600.”
Larkin said no one likes the service charges Ticketmaster adds to ticket prices, but the key problem in the U.S. is the lack of regulation on ticket re-selling. So when a popular show goes on sale, many of the people rushing to buy tickets just want to get them and sell them to others at vastly inflated prices.
In many European nations, tickets can’t legally be resold for more than face value.
A Billboard article found that tickets for the remaining U.S. shows are selling for about $2,600 each, and tickets in Europe were 87 percent lower.
The article suggested that, at those prices, a Taylor Swift fan would save money by flying to Paris for a show even though they would have to buy airline tickets and pay for nights in a hotel.
That’s just what Chelsea Bauer did. Last summer she had registered for presale codes — the lottery that decides who can get in the virtual line to buy tickets — in several counties and succeeded in France.
That meant going online at 2 a.m. due to the different time zones, but the result was VIP floor tickets for herself and three friends at $300 each. The show was earlier this month in Paris.
“There were definitely a lot of people at the show who were not from France,” said Bauer of Mount Pleasant.
Like Augustine, Bauer and her companions made a vacation of it.
Augustine’s $150 tickets for the Stockholm show were in a VIP section in front of the stage, with its own bar, she said. Her group turned their overseas concert trip into an 8-day trip that included a visit to Scotland.