1 Year Later - SWT Reflection
Let me start with some context: I created the original SWT platform for myself because I wanted to see the Eras Tour, but could not afford the extremely expensive resale prices, so I started something to scrape StubHub for cheap tickets and price changes. I then asked some people if they would like it, they said yes, so I scraped together the original codebase to be sort of reliable for people and launched it as Swifties Want Tickets. This was the start of something big.
Within a few days of launching, we already had like 700 members of our Discord server, which was basically the biggest part of our platform and our amazing community. After that, I started to make a new project called SWT Market, which was supposed to be a super innovative resale market that made checking for tickets and stuff much easier. It worked pretty well for us for what it was, and was one of the things that helped us get tickets.
After that, we started tracking last-minute Ticketmaster drops with the help of our moderators. I vividly remember sitting on calls for hours, waiting for the drops to happen so we could notify everyone in the Discord server. It was a lot of fun.
We really blew up for the first time mid-summer of 2023, when the few extra LA dates were added to The Eras Tour with no prior announcement, and ticket sales were going absolutely insane, and people were just like “how the hell do you get tickets for this”, among other things. That summer, we continued to steadily grow and do a lot of work, and I think the highlight of that summer was during LA, when we managed to give away like 20 tickets,s and we ended up buying like 100 through account driving. It was a magical experience that I will never ever forget.
Fast forward a year to the new dates coming up, and it was pretty insane. We had spent the last year really refining things internally and building a few platforms, the main one being Notify Que, which was meant to track Ticketmaster drops and auto-join the queue via an extension. It worked well for the most part, until I got really sick and wasn’t able to do much because I was like DYING. But that’s still a way away. For now, it was pre-Miami, and we did have a lot of success getting tickets for people.
It wasn’t until Miami that we really blew up, like I’m talking, we doubled our audience in about 2 days, and that was absolutely crazy because we didn’t know what the hell we should do about that. It was pretty chaotic and stuff, but I know we helped a lot of people get to The Eras Tour that weekend, and I was so absolutely proud of that. One of the things I vividly remember most that weekend (besides being undiagnosed t1d) is the fact that when me, Amy, and one of the other mods sat down at our seat (we all went together for Miami night one), the people behind us were casually talking about our account, saying they were like so thankful for us. We literally turn around to see people talking about us and saying how much we helped them. We talked to them, and they were super cool people. I also got to meet other people whom we helped get to Miami, and it was an extremely special experience.
Over the next two months, we did a lot of work (not without controversy) and helped people get to the rest of The Eras Tour shows, which was super cool, and I also got like extremely sick and stuff, which kind of ruined my life, but we aren’t going to talk about that. Through these amazing experiences with SWT, I’ve made some of my best friends as well, and knowing that these people have my back is so cool. The community we’ve built has been absolutely insane, and I’m so grateful for every single person who helped us get here.
I cannot believe its been a year since this tour ended, and I just love y’all so much,
A