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Five minutes before the presale tickets for Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour were released on Tuesday, I sat nervously at my office desk. I was number 19,890 in Ticketmaster’s online waiting room queue—which, if you are familiar with the concert ticketing platform, can be a real roll of the dice—and my palms were sweating. What if my page crashed and I lost my place in line? What if my internet froze? What if there were no tickets left once I actually made it into the main site? The pressure was on, and I wasn’t especially hopeful.
This was not a new feeling: In recent years, getting tickets to see your favorite artist in concert—from Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodrigo to Oasis—has begun to feel like playing the Hunger Games. Not only are you battling it out with thousands of diehard fans, many of whom will gladly travel internationally to see a show (they call this gig-tripping), for the same limited number of seats, but you also have a bevy of technological hurdles to clear. Popular tours are known to crash the Ticketmaster site, the platform literally buckling under the weight of fan demand—and sometimes, even when you do secure tickets, Ticketmaster will accuse you of being a bot and summarily cancel your purchase.
It’s a far cry from the glory days of the early aughts, when you could save up a few hundred bucks, log online, and simply click “buy.” I saw Britney Spears, the princess of pop, at her Circus tour in 2009 for under $300—easily puchasing tickets from my rural Canadian home with dodgy internet access. Now, you have to approach sale dates like an assassin, armed with a very clear course of action (basically, you must grab the first seats you see), reliable WiFi, and, of course, a credit card at the ready. Every second counts, after all: You only have a few minutes to check out before the system kicks you out—and that’s if you’re lucky enough to make it that far in the first place.
As my Beyoncé waiting-room queue ticked down to 1,000 people in front of me—only a few more minutes of waiting, I thought—I checked what fellow Beyhive fans were saying online about the process. Naturally, many were frustrated with the wait times. “It’s too many ppl in this line,” wrote one user. “Y’all said the album was trash and y’all couldn’t afford eggs. Why are y’all in here?” Others were frustrated about the site freezing as they attempted to make a purchase, or the small number of seats available in the pre-sale. (The general sale is on February 14—good luck with that.)
Then, all at once, I was in. I took a quick glance at the seating map and only a handful of two-seat options (for a friend and me) were available in the entire (enormous!) New Jersey arena. I clicked on a pair in the 100s level for $500 a pop and tried to check out.
These tickets are no longer available.
I selected another two seats on the floor (these ones pricier, at $700 each), and was greeted with the same message: effectively, Someone else nabbed them, you schmuck.
Nothing was left! The only available tickets were in the ultra-VIP “Buckin’ Honey Pit” right by the stage. As it turns out, if you’re willing to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars, money can buy happiness.
It’s no secret that concert tickets are fueled by a corrupt, capitalist system. At the end of the day, artists and venues don’t really care about what’s fair to the fans; they just want to make a buck. But new laws are slowly being implemented to stem the tide. Just last year, the House passed the TICKET Act, which would require sellers to list the total cost of a ticket (including hidden fees) before checkout, and require secondary sellers to provide refunds to customers in the event of a show’s cancellation.
I lingered on the Cowboy Carter Ticketmaster page, ready to admit my defeat. The show was sold out—for now. Perhaps I would try my luck again on the general sale date.
But get this: After a few minutes of staring at an empty seating map, suddenly, I saw two tickets pop up in the prime 100s section. Someone must have released them, or failed to check out in time. I clicked on them, furiously plugged in my payment information, and ta-da!
So, don’t lose hope, Beyhive. Play the waiting game, stay ready, and you just may be able to see the queen on-stage. Oh, and maybe swap out your modem.
