Taylor Swift fans score tickets by camping overnight outside Ticketek office

A group of clever Swifties have found a way to hack the system and jump the queue for the final ticket sale for the Australian leg of her Eras tour.
Frustrated after missing out on tickets in the last two pre-sales and desperate for a chance to see the megastar live, a small group of fans have camped out overnight in front of a Ticketek centre at Orange in regional NSW.

“Camping overnight at the Ticketek office for Taylor Swift tickets because that’s legitimately easier than getting them online,” 30-year-old mum Bec Sammut said in a now viral TikTok post that has been viewed by more than 270,000 people.

“Still 3 hours until the box office opens, but the vibes are immaculate.”

She was able secured four tickets within three minutes of the tickets being released for sale and they were “the exact ones [she] wanted” in the lower bowl section.

Rather than wait in the virtual queue with thousands of other Swifties glued to multiple devices in the hopes of securing the tickets, they decided to take their chances at the box office.

She spent ten hours in the queue after deciding to take the risk and camp out overnight with her three friends until the office opened at 9am.

A white piece of paper on the front door signified that Taylor Swift tickets would go on sale at 10am.

“I finished work at 11.30pm and the original plan was to go at 6am but all of us were anxious about getting tickets, especially with how hard it was to get tickets online,” she said.

“By the time we go there it was 12.30am, we were the first ones there.”

The girls settled into camp chairs, dressed in their warmest puffer jackets and beanies, in preparation for the freezing night ahead.

A second person arrived at 1am, another three at 5am, and by 6am the word had well and truly got out as groups of people started to join the queue.

The Ticketek office staff allowed the fans to come in from the cold when the office opened at 9am, but another hour of waiting was ahead before the box office opened for sales.

“The staff there couldn’t even access the tickets on their computer until 10am,” she said.

“Once the clock clicked ten, every one did a countdown and the staff were able to get in.

“From the time they got into the computer and the time they got the tickets it was literally three minutes.”

There are just 22 Ticketek agencies across Australia, including four in NSW and eight in Victoria.

“One just happened to be in my town which was so-so lucky,” Ms Sammutt said.

“I would much rather wait in a line for ten hours in zero degree weather knowing I have 100 per cent chance of a ticket, than sit online for ten hours and not even make it past the first page.”

To keep the queue fair, and in the typical organising fashion of Taylor’s fan base, Ms Sammut and her friends used a permanent marker to mark everyone’s hand with a number when they arrived.

That way if someone needed to use the bathroom or go get food, there was no squabbling over the queue position.

Ms Sammut wanted to ᴀssure fellow Swifties that even though her friends had worked out how to skip the ticket queue, they had no intention of hoarding the prized tickets.

“I only bought four tickets for me and my three friends that are all going together,” she said.

“I wanted to leave as many tickets for other people as possible.”

Fans from right across Australia and the globe jumped to the comments section to share a range of emotions over the queue hack.

Many praised their fellow fans for their decision to go back to “old school” methods – something which Ms Sammut said she hasn’t done since she was 21-years-old.