Taylor Swift responds to Ticketmaster before continuing to break records with six AMA awards

Taylor Swift's fans (Swifties) have not only helped her break AMA history this week with the 32-year-old singer setting the record for most wins, but have also broken Ticketmaster as the site cancelled public sale tickets for the Eras Tour.

Taylor Swift scooped six awards at the American Music Awards on 20 November including Artist of the Year, Favourite Female Pop and Country Artist, Favourite Pop and Country Album and Favourite Music Video of the Year for her 10-minute short film of All Too Well starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien.

The Anti-Hero singer’s latest triumphs tipped her to be the most awarded act in AMA history with 40 wins to her name, beating the likes of Michael Jackson who had 26 gongs and Whitney Houston with 22.

While AMA nominations are based on fan interactions such as streaming and album sales, Billboard charts and tour grosses, the winners of the music awards are decided on fan votes alone.

Taylor thanked her fanbase when collecting her award on Sunday night: “In the past few years, I have released more music than I did in the decade preceding that. I really feel that it is down to the fact that you, the fans, made it clear that you wanted to hear lots of music.

“I have the fans to thank, essentially, for my happiness. I love you more than I can say. I cannot express how unbelievable it is to me that I get to do this and that you still care.”

Although Taylor’s successful AMA night shows how dedicated her fans are, the Shake It Off singer had to defend her fanbase earlier in the week, as public sale tickets for her upcoming US Era Tour were cancelled after Ticketmaster sold out due to ‘extraordinarily high demand’.

Ticketmaster began pre-sales for Taylor’s tour, which features songs from Evermore, Lover, Folklore and Midnights, on 17 November and generated a record-breaking $300-$400 million on pre-sales alone.

The website crashed due to ‘historically unprecedented demand’ as nearly 3.5 million people and bots tried to buy tickets, leaving not only some presale fans empty-handed but also ridding any chance of public sale purchases.

Taylor spoke out about the devastating fiasco on Instagram: “It goes without saying that I am extremely protective of my fans. It’s really difficult to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”

She added: “I am not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand, and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pi**** me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”

Taylor’s 2023 Eras Tour comes five years after her last tour in 2018 called Reputation, and surpassed it as the highest-grossing North American tour.