Hi New Orleans! I hope everyone at the shows this weekend enjoyed their killer surprise songs! If you’re just joining us, I recommend taking a look at last week’s Miami post for a more in-depth explanation of some of these patterns. This weekend marked an overwhelming success for SWT, and we’re excited that so many of you got to attend a show. Here’s to hoping we can once again replicate this for Indianapolis!

Ticketmaster Drops

Stage Drop

New Orleans did a fabulous job of staying pretty close to predictions in most regards. Let’s start with the stage drop, which happened at 6:47 CT on Thursday night. This is fully within the pattern we saw during summer 2023! 

As a reminder, stage drops are tied to the stage setup and typically include extra floor chairs and obstructed view sections. This time, inventory was approximately 4,000-4,500 for each night, which is a little higher than we saw in Miami. They released multiple obstructed view sections, some back floor, and lots of lower bowl seats. 

In terms of access, it looks like a majority of Verified Fans were able to get into the stage drop, but by no means all. Waitlisted accounts seem to be sitting at around 40% in / 60% out. Accounts with no NOLA registration were unable to access this sale, similar to Miami and summer 2023. A majority of our driving accounts were able to access the sale.

One difficulty that haunted us through both the stage and production drops was the “we are unable to complete this request” error. This error occurs as a user tries to add tickets to their cart, and it’s often in the place of the “tickets are not available, please select again” message. More than half of respondents reported this error, with a majority unable to purchase tickets after receiving it. The browser used doesn’t seem to make a difference.

We aren’t sure what causes it, but our best guess is that it’s an overzealous bot prevention measure. Trying over and over to cart tickets seems to trigger a suspicious activity alert and prevent you from checking out. We think that the cooldown time is exponential, like when you get an iPhone password wrong multiple times and the cooldown goes up. For a more technical explanation, look at this post.

Production Drops

The production drops threw us for a bit of a loop! Production drops release large amounts of leftover inventory and can be anywhere in the stadium, but this week we saw a lot of lower bowl. Night 1 went as expected, with a production drop at 3:38 CT on Friday (same day) and an inventory of about 1385 tickets. 

However, as Taylor took the stage, we got a production drop for Nights 2-3 at 8:27 CT. Our inventory tracker experienced some technical issues, but we estimate that inventory was around 1,000-1,300 for each night. 

Access was pretty much identical to the stage drop and past Miami patterns, with pretty much all accounts keeping their status of access/no access.

We also saw the continuing “we are unable to complete this request” error. This time, it reportedly affected about 70 people, with most unable to check out afterwards.

Sales & Resale

From a sales perspective, New Orleans was a stand out success! Our driving team purchased more than 20 tickets, some of which went to account holders and some to in-server sales. However, our members really came through for us with face value tickets to sell. In total, Swifties Want Tickets sold 45 tickets, which had a combined total of over 21,000 entries! A majority were for Night 1 and many had very short entry and claim windows. A major thank you to all of our sellers, and well done to our sales team for processing so many tickets in a short amount of time!

Resale is a bit of a different story, but one that absolutely fits within established patterns. Night 1 saw the cheapest tickets. This is consistent with Miami and summer 2023. Prices dropped after the Stage drop, which causes an increase in inventory on the resale market. Interestingly, Night 3 had the most inventory. This might have contributed to its low minimum price the day before the show. In general, average prices did not fall very much leading up to the show. If you’re planning to buy resale, Night 1 is still your best bet.

Looking ahead to Indianapolis

To gaze into my crystal ball and predict the future (just kidding, I don’t have one of those!), I think Indianapolis is going to be New Orleans but with higher demand. We are expecting a stage drop on Thursday with potential production drops on Friday and possibly Saturday/Sunday depending on whether production drops happen separately or together. 

If you’re looking at resale, Night 1 is the way. I think prices will likely stay higher than NOLA and Miami since this is the last US stop, but there’s no way to know for sure until after it happens. 

As always, we’re tracking drops on our Twitter and Discord throughout this week. If you have questions, we’re happy to answer them in our server!