After numerous hitches and hours of waiting for disappointed fans in the private sale of first tickets for Taylor Swift’s US tour, Ticketmaster has halted general advance sales. The company said on Thursday (local time) that the pre-sale, originally scheduled for Friday, will not take place due to “unusually high demand and insufficient ticket supply”.
It was initially unclear whether pre-sales would take place at a later date and how many tickets were still available. Ticketmaster initially did not respond to AFP requests.
Earlier this week, tickets for Swift’s “The Eras Tour” went on sale in a special pre-sale. However, the attack by the fans had crashed the servers, frustrated users reported waiting hours and then being kicked out of the queue with nothing.
According to Ticketmaster, more than two million tickets were sold for the tour on Tuesday – a new record. More than 3.5 million people had previously registered as “verified fans” and more than 1.3 million interested parties received access codes for pre-sale.
However, according to Ticketmaster, a large number of unregistered fans also tried to purchase tickets online, and with access attempts by automated bots, the website had nearly 3.5 billion requests. “Judging the traffic on our website, Taylor should be doing more than 900 stadium concerts – one stadium concert every night for the next two and a half years,” the company said.
The presale debacle ignited the debate over Ticketmaster’s dominance of the presale market. For years, concertgoers have complained of hidden fees, increased costs and low ticket slots due to pre-sales. (AFP)