Taylor Swift doesn’t begin her Eras Tour for another four months, but it’s become increasingly difficult for fans to secure tickets to the shows. Tickets went on sale on Tuesday, November 15, through Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program. The program requires potential concertgoers to sign up ahead of time and rank their preferred cities and dates for attendance. The idea is to cut down on the bots who historically swoop in for tickets before actual fans can buy them.
Ticketmaster has said that over 3.5 million people registered as Verified Fans, and over 2 million tickets were sold on Tuesday—and that was even before a second pre-sale window opened for Capital One cardholders. Accordingly, the Ticketmaster website was flooded with traffic, getting 3.5 billion total system requests—four times the site’s previous high. As a result, users experienced technical difficulties and long wait times for the chance to buy tickets. The issues were exacerbated apparently due to a “staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes.”
Now, Ticketmaster has announced: “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.”
It’s currently unclear if tickets to the Eras Tour remain, or if Ticketmaster will reschedule its public on-sale date. Pitchfork has reached out to representatives for Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift for additional comment and information.
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