Taylor Swift's Minnesota fans riled by concert ticket program for U.S. Bank Stadium show

Min­ne­so­ta fans' mad love for Tay­lor Swift is turn­ing into bad blood in some cases now that early tick­ets to her Sept. 1 U.S. Bank Stadium con­cert are on sale and caus­ing wide­spread stick­er shock.

Many die-hards and/or giv­ing par­ents who got in on the sing­er's Ver­i­fied Fan pre-sale pro­gram — os­ten­si­bly a means to fight tick­et scalp­ers — faced the di­lem­ma of pay­ing $795 or $447 for VIP pack­ag­es with tick­ets in prime lo­ca­tions, or else $87-$153 plus fees for seats in the up­per reach­es of the 65,000-ca­pac­i­ty sta­di­um.

Just get­ting the first crack at buy­ing Swift's tick­ets cost a lot of time and en­er­gy.

The sing­er's Tick­et­mas­ter-gen­er­ated Ver­i­fied Fan pro­gram re­quired sev­er­al weeks of jump­ing through hoops to get "boost­ed" to the front of the vir­tual line. Fans could earn boosts by buy­ing her al­bum in dif­fer­ent for­mats, watch­ing her videos or post­ing Swift-re­lated selfies.

Af­ter all that, the ver­i­fied Swift fans were giv­en a spe­cif­ic one-hour win­dow to log on and buy tick­ets start­ing this week. And that's when they first got a load of the com­plexi­ties and prices.

"I guess my teen­age girls are going to be dis­ap­point­ed," said Lance Schwartz of Man­kato, who was giv­en a buy­ing win­dow Thurs­day night.

Schwartz was left with the op­tion of buy­ing the $447-plus VIP pack­age or pay­ing $150 for "ob­struct­ed view" seats.He opt­ed not to buy any­thing.

A fan who spent "hours upon hours" try­ing to get boost­ed in the Ver­i­fied Fan pro­gram, Alyssa Pelish joined the cho­rus of com­plaints on Twit­ter.

"Wasn't the i­de­a of this so that tick­et scalp­ers couldn't do this to fans that have been there since the be­gin­ning?" Pelish tweet­ed as @AlyssaRelish, not­ing that the $795 "pit tick­et" near the stage was half her month­ly sal­a­ry.

VIP pack­ag­es in­clud­ed such extras as a book of Swift's po­et­ry and a lami­nated pass — which doesn't ac­tu­al­ly get you back­stage. These pack­ag­es were list­ed on Tick­et­mas­ter for the Min­ne­ap­olis show for $447 to $1,498.

"RIP my bank ac­count," tweet­ed a fan with the Swift-re­lated han­dle @oncebelonged2me.

U.S. Bank Stadium rep­re­sen­ta­tives said fans can opt out of the VIP pack­ag­es and still buy tick­ets in the stan­dard $50-$225 price range, in­clud­ing many seats sold out­side the Ver­i­fied Fan pre-sale pro­gram, start­ing Dec. 13 via Tick­et­mas­ter.

USBS staff de­clined a re­quest to pro­vide a map or guide to the dif­fer­ent tick­et tiers — what's be­ing charged where — in the pub­lic­ly fund­ed sta­di­um.

In a state­ment sent to the Los An­ge­les Times, Swift's team de­fend­ed the pro­gram as a way to re­ward the most loy­al fans: "If these same tick­ets were of­fered on the open mar­ket, scalp­ers would snatch them up and fans would be pay­ing thou­sands of dol­lars for them," the sing­er's rep­re­sen­ta­tives said.

Of course, scalp­ers are still hav­ing their way. Stubhub.com al­read­y has hun­dreds of tick­ets list­ed for the Sept. 1 con­cert, rang­ing from $150 nose­bleed seats to $450 low­er-level tick­ets to $1,200-$3,500 for floor ac­cess.

Plenty of Twin Cities fans did land de­cent seats, though, and said they were hap­py with the pro­gram.

"I'M SCREAM­ING I CAN'T WAIT," tweet­ed 20-year-old fan Moana (@afemalediety), who glad­ly paid $450 for a VIP pack­age with a floor tick­et.

Ted Cheesebrough, who reg­u­lar­ly buys con­cert tick­ets, ap­plaud­ed Swift's anti-scalp­ing ef­forts af­ter he wound up with $160 seats in a low­er level. He be­lieves he im­proved his chan­ces play­ing along with the boost­ing game.

"It was a no-brainer in ord­er to get bet­ter seats for my kids and I," said Cheesebrough. "It was a little corny, but I didn't care. I am a little corny, too — and, frank­ly, so is Tay­lor Swift."

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658

@ChrisRstrib