Ticketmaster Cancels Public Sale For Taylor Swift’s Tour Amid Presale Chaos

Festival passes for Glastonbury might have sold out in one hour, but some Taylor Swift fans never even got the chance to buy tickets for her US tour. Ticketmaster, the company selling seats to the pop singer’s 52-dates Eras Tour, couldn’t handle presale demands. 

In the aftermath of the presale chaos, Ticketmaster canceled the public sale on Thursday, citing “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems” and an inventory that won’t meet demand.

The sale was supposed to kick off on November 18th. 

During the presale day, the ticket seller displayed several technical issues, including hour-long waits, periodic outages, and glitches when Swifties tried to bag their tickets.

Fans took to social media to tell their Taylor Swift tour booking story with Ticketmaster, some stating that they waited in virtual queues only to find that it was too late to purchase tickets.

One Twitter user said he was kicked out and placed back at the end of the queue when selecting seats. Others faced website interruptions and crashes at different stages of the booking process, as the website said it “cannot process the request.” 

In a statement, Live Nation’s Ticketmaster described the ticket pre-selling demand as a “historically unprecedented one,” since millions of users landed on the site.

Ticketmaster selected 1.5 million people to get presale codes for Taylor Swift because “historically, 40% of invited fans actually show up and buy tickets, and most purchase an average of 3 tickets.” 

But this time, the platform registered 3.5 billion total system requests – four times more than its previous peak. 

More than two million tickets were sold on Tuesday for Swift’s upcoming tour – the most ever sold for an artist in a single day. 

At the time of the presale, the ticket seller encouraged Swifties queueing online to “hang tight,” as the team was “working to get fans through as quickly as possible.” 

Since her last 2018 tour, Taylor Swift has released four albums (not to mention her “It’s me, hi, I am the problem it’s me” Anti-Hero lyric is TikTok’s current anthem) which has increased demand to see her live. 

Reselling prices also reflect Swift’s five-year abstinence from music tours, as The Guardian reported that some tickets were listed for $22,000.