The US entertainment ticketing company Ticketmaster has canceled plans to sell tickets to the public on Friday for Taylor Swift’s 2023 Eras tour after supply was far outstripped by demand and the sales system descended into chaos.
A clamor for tickets this week led to part of Ticketmaster’s online sales system crashing and long delays for fans who accessed the site but were left waiting for hours for the chance to snap up dates to see the pop star’s stadium tour.
The disarray sparked complaints from consumers and on Thursday afternoon the company tweeted news that it was suspending sales.
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
Two million tickets were sold during presales on Tuesday, the most ever sold on the platform in a single day, the company said.
Questions remained about how remaining tickets might become available.
The California-based sales and distribution giant faced questions on Thursday from Democratic US senator Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate antitrust committee, over its sales practices.
In a letter to Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment Inc, Klobuchar voiced “serious concern about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers”.
Earlier, Tennessee’s attorney general said he was launching a consumer protection investigation into Ticketmaster after his office was inundated with complaints from Taylor Swift fans.
Jonathan Skrmetti, the state’s attorney general, said at a press conference on Wednesday that while no direct allegations of misconduct have been made against Ticketmaster, his office will look into the complaints made about the company.
“If it’s a consumer protection violation and we can find exactly where the problems are, we can get a court order that makes the company do better,” Skrmetti said, according to local news station WGRZ. “If it’s not a consumer protection [violation], but it’s an antitrust law that is violated, there is a wide range of options that are available.”
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is concerned about consumer complaints related to @Ticketmaster’s pre-sale of @taylorswift13 concert tickets. He and his Consumer Protection team will use every available tool to ensure that no consumer protection laws were violated.
— TN Attorney General (@AGTennessee) November 16, 2022
Ticketmaster said that there has been “historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up to buy tickets” for Swift’s upcoming tour, set to start in March. The company said that “hundreds of thousands of tickets have been sold” in the tour’s presale, which started on Tuesday.
Swift announced her tour, which now has 52 dates across the US, earlier in November. Those looking for tickets had about two weeks to sign up for Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program where, if chosen, they would receive a code getting them into the presale. On Tuesday, many with codes were left empty-handed when the site crashed.
Ticketmaster said the Verified Fan program was supposed to deter bots and scalpers, allowing the tickets to go to true concertgoers, but tickets are already being resold on sites like Stubhub for up to $20,000.
Swift has not publicly commented on the matter.
“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned [sic] in,” tweeted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shortly after the debacle unfolded on Tuesday. “They need to break up.”
Ticketmaster, which acts as a facilitator between venues and performers, merged in 2010 with Live Nation, a company that owns venues as well as sells tickets and promotes tours, to create Live Nation Entertainment, now Ticketmaster’s parent company.
The company has long had loud consumer critics – a 2010 Wired headline reads “Everyone hates Ticketmaster – but no one can take it down” – and has drawn the attention of lawmakers for years. In 2021, five Democratic House representatives sent a letter to the justice department asking it to look into Ticketmaster and Live Nation as a potential antitrust violation.
“Ticketmaster has strangled competition in live entertainment ticketing and harmed consumers and must be revisited,” the lawmakers said in their letter.