Taylor Swift is playing to the biggest crowd in her career at Melbourne’s MCG stadium.
The city is alive with Swifties — Taylor Swift fans — young and old for the wildly anticipated Eras Tour, which takes fans on a journey through her musical eras.
Thousands of fans are dressed in brightly coloured, sparkly outfits, indicating their favourite Taylor Swift albums or ‘eras’, and thousands are wearing homemade friendship bracelets and exchanging them with strangers.
There are also Taylor Swift fans who don’t have tickets to the show but have turned up, decked out in creative costumes anyway to soak up the atmosphere, while others have made last-minute efforts to score a ticket.
Many show attendees are from Melbourne but plenty have travelled from interstate and internationally to see Swift perform.
Swift’s biggest show of her career
Tour promoter Frontier said this week that Swift’s MCG concerts will be the largest of her career.
Also, her three concerts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday will break the record for the most tickets sold by one artist at the venue.
She’s performing four concerts in Sydney next week at Accor Stadium.
Desperate fans hoping to score last-minute tickets
Some fans have been desperately seeking tickets.
Sam, 19, was holding up a sign that said “Got spare tickets? Speak Now.”
The diehard Swiftie said he’s been staying up late, trying everywhere to get his hands on a ticket to the Eras tour, even looking for tickets to Swift’s dates overseas.
“It was horrible to be honest,” he said.
But at least he met some fellow fans along the way.
Nicola and Sam are both looking for tickets and met at the MCG today.
“Same thing, I’ve been up late at night, on Facebook marketplace,” she said.
Outside the MCG, there are voice announcements urging fans without tickets to stay away from the concourse, and while there are plenty of police around — some spotted exchanging friendship bracelets with fans — it’s unclear at this stage to what extent that will be enforced.
Unfortunate fans heartbroken over scam tickets
While there are squeals of joy and cheers in almost every direction, the vibes were a little different at the ticket enquires line with some anxious fans waiting to see whether they could have fallen victim to a scam.
One fan, Alfred, said he was devastated after his ticket suddenly “disappeared.”
“We could see the QR code and everything for the whole week, and then it was suddenly not valid,” he said.
Alfred didn’t want to say exactly how much he had paid for his four tickets — but it was “more than $1,000.”
He said he had bought them off a friend.
He had even emailed Ticketek ahead of time to double check the tickets were real, and they had sent him a confirmation email.
But Alfred said Ticketek said that email was in error, and they can’t do anything to help him and his friends for tonight’s show and advised him to report it to the police.
“They said, oh no, sorry. It was misinformation, we can’t do anything about it,” he said.