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Certified Swiftie Wenfei Xie, a Kansas City, Mo. doctor met a fellow fan when she attended the superstar's concert in her hometown last year. And from there began a journey of intricately organized spread sheets and plans to see Swift at her Paris La Défense Arena concert, Rolling Stone reported.
Xie was surprised that buying tickets to the Paris concert of the Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department cost much lower in the US. She started out with just one VIP suite for herself and a some of her college friends. From there, she ended up booking 12 VIP suites for three nights for 291 people, most of whom members of a physicians' group of Facebook.
The Eras Tour and ticketing
The Swiftie doctor told the magazine, “It's really cool to meet other people who are similar to you and bond over your love of Taylor Swift.”
As to the cost, she said it may be expensive, “but it's all relative.” Xie explained that if you really want to see Swift in concert and you end up taking a vacation while you're at it, you spend either less or just as much as you would in the US. StubHub and its fees add up, and you might not even get good seats.
Even though Xie arranged the trip for a small conference worth of people, she didn't profit off it. Each attendee paid the face value of €1,700 for suite access. This included champagne, food and most importantly, private bathrooms. And just to compare, if they had done this in either Miami or New Orleans, it would have cost them $5,000 to $8,000 each. And that's without food and/or drinks.
Swifties in Paris
When asked why she did it, Xie responded, “How many time in your life do you have an opportunity like this? To bring so many cool people together and see what kind of joy that it brings them has been really cool.”
She and the group aren't the only international fans who went to Paris for the opening of Swift's European tour. More than 25% of her Paris show tickets were bought by Americans, according to París La Défense Arena CEO Frédéric Longuépée's interview with NBC News.
A lot of Swift fans were unable to see her US summer dates. Others had difficulty buying tickets for the upcoming North American leg of the tour. Those tickets cost thousands on StubHub.
Resale laws: US vs Europe
However, in France, resale laws keep ticket inflation at bay, which meant fans can spend their money on airline tickets and hotels to attend the Eras Tour abroad. For many fans, the flight tickets were cheaper than US domestic flights. And the number of hotels available in Paris meant there were many affordable options to choose from.
France has a law that prohibits sporting and cultural event tickets to be sold above face value. Ticketmaster France's seller-to-seller reseller platform is governed by these restrictions.
The rules state, “You may not list resale tickets for a price above the face value of the primary tickets, except with the agreement of the event organizer which you will be informed of when you offer resale tickets for sale on the resale platform.”
Live Nation, Ticketmaster and the US Senate
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This is a stark difference from the US, which has greatly encourage many Swifties to travel internationally for her Eras Tour. Billboard reported last week that European countries such as France and Germany, have strict caps on ticket resale. This means very little incentive for scalpers since they can't mark up the tickets as much as they think customers want to pay.
In the US, no such laws exist. Brokers and scalpers insist that the concert tickets are theirs to do with as they please, and that means they can sell it for however much they want. American reseller platforms don't have any incentive to cap their prices since they make more when demand rises.
