A disabled young woman who purchased a premium ticket for a Taylor Swift concert next July at Milan’s San Siro stadium is sparking a rallying cry in Italy after she was informed by organizers that the venue’s front row section will not be enabled for wheelchair access.
Silvia Stoyanova, 35, who reportedly paid €300 ($327) for a seat at the front of the venue, says concert organizers subsequently informed her that another area of the stadium — which is farther away from the stage and also lateral to it — had been designated for wheelchair access. However, tickets in that section were already sold out.
The promoters for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in Italy, Mimmo D’Alessandro and Adolfo Galli, have told multiple Italian press outlets that the seats at San Siro enabled with wheelchair access are only situated in the lateral orange section of the stadium.
Representatives for D’Alessandro, Galli and Swift did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
Stoyanova posted a video on TikTok in which she asked organizers to “stop seeing us [disabled people] as second-class citizens.” She added, “You need to understand that you are leaving at home sick people who don’t have the luxury of waiting another 13 years for Taylor Swift to return to Italy.”
Stoyanova has launched a petition on Change.org to get organizers to set up a further ramp to enable wheelchair access for the July 13 and 14 event, which has gathered over 32,000 signatures in less than three weeks. She has also launched an appeal to Italy’s Minister for Disabilities, Alessandra Locatelli, asking her to “take charge of the more playful aspects of the life of people with disabilities.”
She said she was “hopeful” because of the precedent of another young disabled Italian woman, Sophia Righetti, who fought a legal battle to get a second ramp for the disabled installed in the front of stage area of the Verona Arena amphitheater, which hosts large-scale concerts and opera performances. Righetti won, partly by basing her case on the claim that by being relegated to the sidelines of a concert, she was a victim of discrimination.
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