Ticketmaster has canceled the general on-sale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” that was scheduled to begin Friday, November 18th.
“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,” the company wrote in a social media statement.
Pre-sale for “The Eras Tour” began on Tuesday, November 15th, and quickly overwhelmed Ticketmaster’s website. Representatives for the company said that 14 million people attempted to book seats, while they had only planned for 1.5 million fans to purchase tickets with a waitlist designed for an additional two million prospective buyers. Ticketmaster also wasn’t prepared for the sheer volume of bots attempting to grab up inventory.
“The staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak,” Ticketmaster said earlier this week. They did manage to sell two million Swift tickets, which they said was a one-day single artist record.
Ticketmaster’s handling of “The Eras Tour” has drawn criticism from Swifties as well as regulators and politicians. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and David Cicilline have called for renewed scrutiny of the 2010 Live Nation and Ticketmaster merger, suggesting the combined companies have created a monopoly. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has also announced that he’s investigating potential antitrust violations, saying at a press conference, “As an industry player, you would think Ticketmaster would be prepared. Because they have a dominant position, they may have thought they didn’t need to worry about that. This could be an indicator that there’s not enough competition in the market.”
While general on-sale has been called off, pre-sale is expected to continue as long as inventory lasts, and you can use code HEADLINER to get tickets on Ticketmaster.
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 (@Ticketmaster) November 17, 2022
