Olivia Rodrigo rose to fame in the music industry in 2021, with her debut album SOUR, and now with her sophomore album GUTS, has announced her next tour!
Rodrigo, before her recent music ventures, was also an actor. She’s more known for starring in the Disney Channel shows, “Bizaardvark” (2016-2019) and “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” (2019-2022). Her first album SOUR won 3 Grammys, including making Olivia Best New Artist for 2021. Her first tour, the SOUR tour, included 49 shows, spanning between April 5th, 2022, and July 7th, 2022. The set list included all of the songs on the original album, with occasional covers of popular songs.
Fans won’t know the setlist for the GUTS tour until its opening night, which is February 23, 2023, in Palm Springs, at Acrisure Arena. Throughout 7 months, Rodrigo will perform 75 shows (subject to change), the tour concluding on August 27, 2024. She’s also coming to Rupp Arena, on July 24th, 2024. “More dates in many countries are yet to come!” states Rodrigo in an Instagram post, announcing the addition of 18 new shows. The 20-year-old will be traveling the world with her tour, including London, Amsterdam, and Paris.
So many fans are excited to see her, but due to her rise in popularity over the past few years, fans are nervous about being able to get tickets.
Ticketmaster has obtained a bad reputation lately, with some people saying getting tickets for any popular artist is as difficult as “The Great War”. This nickname originated from the nightmare of trying to get tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. “The Great War” continues as fans try to get tickets for the GUTS tour, afraid that they will lose their fairly-priced tickets to scalpers, who resell the tickets for more than double their original price.
To help fans receive tickets, Olivia and her team had come up with a couple of ways to ensure that fans get the opportunity to get tickets. The only way you could obtain tickets was through 2 different presales. The first presale was set up only for AmEx card holders, and the other was just if you registered. Despite whichever presale you signed up for, there was never a guarantee that you would get a code, and even if you did get a code, it still did not guarantee tickets. Ticketmaster only sent out a certain amount of codes that allowed for ticket purchasing. Despite the effort of keeping fans happy throughout this process with the Silver Star program, which allows certain reserved tickets that were only able to be purchased in pairs, and only cost $20. With the Silver Star program, the ticket location wouldn’t be disclosed until the day of the concert. Despite all of these precautions, fans were still upset. Kayla Doctrow, a student at Lafayette, got tickets and said, “I’ve been a true fan since SOUR came out, and my mom paid $116 for each ticket, in my opinion, that’s pretty high for nosebleeds.”
The thing that angered fans most was that Ticketmaster had originally said in a tweet that, “Standard tickets will range from $49.50-$199.50 plus taxes and applicable fees,” and that was not the case. Due to her fan base being on the younger side, many people were surprised that she and her team would ask these fans to put out hundreds of dollars for nosebleed tickets. Fans stated that they paid less than $100 for their tickets to the SOUR tour (her first world tour) and for the GUTS tour they are paying upwards of $1,000.
What do you think? Despite most of her shows being already sold out, would you want to go?
