Asian fans skip work, camp out for Taylor Swift’s concert tickets

Millions of people in South East Asia are going crazy to see Taylor Swift.

This has led to serious competition for the 330,000 seats that went on sale on Friday for her only stop in the region.

The pop star’s Eras Tour includes six shows in Singapore in March 2024.

Devoted fans have skipped work, charged up their devices and joined long queues for the coveted tickets.

The tense situation which is unfolding both on and offline, will end with either Bad Blood or with some seeing their Wildest Dreams come true.

Swift is also performing in Japan and Australia, but nowhere else in East or South East Asia, where her fans or “Swifties” are legion.

Singapore, the Indonesian capital Jakarta and the Philippines’ most densely packed city, Quezon, are among the world’s top locations for streaming Swift’s songs, according to Spotify.

So for fans in this corner of Asia, Singapore which is closer, offers visa-free or visa-on-arrival and plenty of cheap flight options, is an easy pick.

The country has long been a popular stop for big music acts because of its impressive public transport and infrastructure – Coldplay is performing at the expansive National Stadium a month before Swift.

This is Swift’s first post-pandemic concert outing. She has not toured since her 2019 Lover album and there’s a wealth of material from three records she has released since then – Evermore, Folklore and Midnights.

Lines are already snaking outside Singapore post offices, where fans can buy tickets offline. Given the demand, the daily Straits Times suggested four sleepy spots on the island’s outskirts where the chances of getting tickets could be higher.

“It’s Taylor Swift, I just have to see her,” says Joan Ng, who along with a group of her 15-year-old friends has camped out overnight at the post office in a Singapore mall to buy tickets. The girls say Joan is the biggest Swiftie among them.

They couldn’t skip school during the pre-sale, so they convinced their parents to lend them their credit cards and allow them to stay at the mall. They hopped from one shop to another to stay inside and then took turns napping at Haidilao, a popular hot pot chain, until daybreak. They shared a bowl of soup for dinner.

“She’s the best music artist of all time,” says Levincia Ong who considers Swift’s country album about teenage love and heartbreak, Fearless, to be the soundtrack to her life.

Sajani Rajikumar told BBCthat they have to get the tickets because they have “spent so much effort being here”. But the line is moving slowly because the system keeps crashing.

At the front, 18-year-old friends Kean Teo and Kenneth Lim were the first to get hold of the tickets.

“We feel very lucky. It was a long wait,” says Kenneth, grinning. They had wandered around the building for 31 hours, also taking turns to sleep at Haidilao.

It has been no less harrowing online. A competitive pre-sale on Wednesday, which was exclusive to cardholders of Singapore’s United Overseas Bank (UOB), offered a preview of the hunger games that could unfold later in the week.

Over a million fans joined the virtual line and UOB reported a surge in credit and debit card applications in the weeks leading up to the pre-sale.