Education Minister Chan Chun Sing issues challenge to Taylor Swift fans
Education Minister Chan Chun Sing has issued a challenge to Singaporean Swifties – or local fans of American singer Taylor Swift – after receiving many requests for a school holiday on the dates the international pop star is scheduled to perform here in March 2024.
In a Facebook post on Friday, Mr Chan said that if any “creative and enterprising fan” can invite Taylor Swift to their school to perform for free, the Ministry of Education (MOE) will have their school declare a school holiday the next day.
“Then everyone gets to enjoy this inclusive concert,” he added.
This challenge was issued, Mr Chan said, because he was concerned about how fans of other music acts like Coldplay, Blackpink, BTS and Beyoncé, among others, would feel if MOE acceded to the school holiday request from Swift’s fans.
“I am also concerned that this may further fuel inflation as some overseas reports have suggested,” he added.
Mr Chan could have been referring to media reports, like in the New York Times, that when American singer Beyoncé kicked off her latest world tour in Sweden recently, it was said that “a huge influx of visitors attending her first two concerts caused a major, if temporary, surge in hotel and restaurant prices, big enough to have a noticeable effect on Swedish inflation overall”.
It was announced on Wednesday at midnight that Swift will be performing in Singapore as part of The Eras Tour.
The 33-year-old will be playing three nights, from March 2 to 4, 2024, at the National Stadium. Singapore and Japan are Swift’s only two Asian stops on this tour.
A pre-sale for UOB cardmembers will be available from July 5 at noon, while general sales open via Ticketmaster on July 7 at noon.
Fan registration for general on-sale tickets began on Friday at noon and will end on June 28 at noon on Ticketmaster.
Many flocked to the website on Friday morning for fan registration, with some fans commenting about how the website was down for them.
Fans took to Twitter to share screenshots of how they encountered error messages just minutes before 12pm, the time registration was supposed to start.
Some fans received “error: rate exceeded” messages while others received “error 403”. Others complained about not being able to submit their registration.
According to DownDetector, a website that tracks outages, five reports were made regarding Ticketmaster.
The Straits Times has contacted organiser AEG Presents for more information.
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