One day after Ticketmaster announced that it had canceled the public sale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming “The Eras Tour,” the singer said the ordeal has been “excruciating” to watch.
In a statement obtained by CNN, Ticketmaster officials said Thursday that they were canceling the planned ticket sale “due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.” The announcement came two days after demand for tickets swamped Ticketmaster’s website, causing errors for some users and sparking frustration for fans.
“It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” Swift said in a statement posted on Instagram. “We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do.”
She said that it was “really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”
Ticketmaster cancels public sale of Taylor Swift tour tickets
Ticketmaster officials said the company sold more than 2 million tickets for Swift shows on Tuesday — the most ever sold for an artist in a single day. The company utilized its Verified Fan program, in which users register to buy presale tickets, as a way of regulating site traffic and keeping the sales from going to bot accounts.
Still, officials said the site was swamped with traffic from bot attacks and fans who didn’t have Verified Fan invite codes.
Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour’ ticket sales crashed Ticketmaster, sparks frustration for fans
“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” Swift said on Friday. “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.
“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”
For fans who were unable to get tickets, Swift said that she hopes “to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs” and thanked them for wanting to be part of the tour.
Here are some memorable photos of Taylor Swift through the years.
2006: Country singer Taylor Swift arrives at the 41st annual Academy of Country Music Awards held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 23, 2006, in Las Vegas.
2007: Music artist Taylor Swift performs during the Academy of Country Music New Artists’ Party for a Cause show at the MGM Grand Conference Center on May 14, 2007, in Las Vegas.
2008: Singer Taylor Swift arrives at the 50th annual Grammy Awards held at the Staples Center on February 10, 2008, in Los Angeles.
2009: Kanye West (left) jumps onstage after Taylor Swift (center) won the "Best Female Video" award during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall on September 13, 2009, in New York City.
2010: Musicians Kary Perry and Taylor Swift during the 52nd annual Grammy Awards Salute to Icons Honoring Doug Morris held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 30, 2010, in Beverly Hills, California.
2011: Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez perform onstage during the "Speak Now World Tour" at Madison Square Garden on November 22, 2011, in New York City.
2012: Taylor Swift performs onstage during the MTV EMA’s 2012 at Festhalle Frankfurt on November 11, 2012, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
2013: Taylor Swift arrives at the 55th annual Grammy Awards on February 10, 2013, in Los Angeles.
2014: Musician Taylor Swift attends the "Charles James: Beyond Fashion" Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5, 2014, in New York City.
2015: Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian attend the 57th annual Grammy Awards at the Staples Center on February 8, 2015, in Los Angeles.
2016: Recording artist Taylor Swift attends the 2016 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Graydon Carter at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 28, 2016, in Beverly Hills, California.
2017: Musician Taylor Swift performs onstage during the Super Saturday Night Concert at Club Nomadic on February 4, 2017, in Houston.
2018: Taylor Swift attends the 2018 American Music Awards at Microsoft Theater on October 9, 2018, in Los Angeles.
2019: Taylor Swift performs during the TIME 100 Gala 2019 Dinner at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 23, 2019, in New York City.
2020: Taylor Swift attends the 2020 Sundance Film Festival "Miss Americana" Premiere at Eccles Center Theatre on January 23, 2020, in Park City, Utah.
2021: Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, and Aaron Dessner accept the Album of the Year award for "Folklore" onstage during the 63rd annual Grammy Awards at the Los Angeles Convention Center on March 14, 2021, in Los Angeles.
2021: Taylor Swift attends the "All Too Well" New York Premiere on November 12, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
2021: Writer-director Taylor Swift attends a premiere for the short film "All Too Well" at AMC Lincoln Square 13 on Friday, Nov. 12, 2021, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
2022: Taylor Swift speaks during a graduation ceremony for New York University at Yankee Stadium in New York, Wednesday, May 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
2022: Taylor Swift waves to graduates as she participates in a graduation ceremony for New York University at Yankee Stadium in New York, Wednesday, May 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Taylor Swift performs onstage during the Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour at Lumen Field on July 22, 2023 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Mat Hayward/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
