Stadium Issues Stern Warning to Unticketed Fans Ahead of Taylor Swift Concerts
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE - MAY 05: EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO BOOK COVERS. Taylor Swift performs onstage during night one of Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour at Nissan Stadium on May 05, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by John Shearer/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
As Taylor Swift prepares to relaunch the Eras Tour later this month, one stadium is trying to get ahead of the massive, unregulated crowds that are anticipated to surround the venue.
After Swift kicks off the first weekend of the second international leg of her record-breaking tour in Tokyo on Feb. 7—and then hopefully makes her final NFL appearance of the season at the Super Bowl on the 11th—she heads to Australia, playing in Melbourne the weekend of Feb. 17 and hitting Sydney's Accor Stadium the weekend following.
Swifties are expected to swarm the area regardless of whether they have tickets, as has become the norm for the cultural event of the year, to soak up as much of the atmosphere—from trading friendship bracelets with other fans scorned by Ticketmaster to holding impromptu singalongs from beyond the venue's walls—but event managers are advising them to stay home.
Venues for NSW, the government organization that owns and operates the stadium, is warning fans without tickets to stay away, according to The Daily Telegraph. A spokesperson tried to dissuade fans by telling the venue that fans would have a hard time seeing or even hearing anything from outside because of the stadium's design, but there is likely a public safety concern as well.
In Philadelphia, an estimated 20,000 people showed up to enjoy the concert from the parking lot, adding tens of thousands of folks for ticketholders to have to wade through upon exiting and increasing the demand for transit options even more than usual—something the Australian city said they have a "contingency plan" for in hopes of alleviating some of the strain of having so many additional people traveling those evenings.
