Ticketmaster cancels Taylor Swift general public sale, citing 'extraordinarily high demands'
BOSTON – If you were hoping to snag Taylor Swift concert tickets when they go on sale to the general public, it appears you are out of luck.
Fans overwhelmed the Ticketmaster website during presale events Tuesday and Wednesday. Tickets were slated to go on sale to the general public Friday, but the company announced that is no longer the case.
"Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled," Ticketmaster posted Thursday afternoon on social media.
Ticketmaster said that more than 2 million tickets were sold Tuesday for her upcoming tour — the most ever sold for an artist in a single day. It caused a near meltdown of its website.
In a blog post Thursday, Ticketmaster explained that a "record number of fans" wanted to buy tickets to Swift's Eras Tour, which begins next year. That prompted a massive slowdown in its platform and sparked outrage among her millions of fans who couldn't purchase tickets.
On social media, some Massachusetts fans trying to buy tickets for three Gillette Stadium shows reported that they were kicked out of the queue or that they were stuck in the digital line for hours.
Swift is scheduled to play Foxboro's Gillette Stadium on May 19, May 20 and May 21.
Ticketmaster basically said that its "Verified Fans" system, a mechanism aimed at eliminating bots that gives presale codes to individuals, couldn't keep up with the intense demand.
Roughly 3.5 million people signed up for the program to buy Swift tickets, its "largest registration in history." While more than half of those registered were put on a waiting list, the unprecedented demand, combined with a "staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn't have invite codes" drove "unprecedented traffic" to its site, Ticketmaster said, and, essentially, broke it.
"Never before has a Verified Fan on sale sparked so much attention -- or uninvited volume," Ticketmaster said in the blog post. "This disrupted the predictability and reliability that is the hallmark of our Verified Fan platform."
On Tuesday morning, Ticketmaster told CNN Business that the website was "not down" and that "people are actively purchasing tickets." It added that "there has been historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up" to buy tickets for Swift's tour.
The debacle not only stirred outrage among Swift's fans, but also caught the ire of politicians. Senator Amy Klobuchar criticized Ticketmaster in an open letter to its CEO, saying she has "serious concerns" about the company's operations.