Ticketmaster announced Thursday, a day before Taylor Swift Eras Tour tickets were supposed to go on sale to the general public, that it suspended the event.
In a now-deleted press release, Ticketmaster blamed the cancellation of the sale due to the “extraordinary demand on ticketing systems” and “insufficient remaining ticket inventory,” however, did not offer an explanation as to how it ran out of tickets.
Ticketmaster was dedicated as the exclusive ticket sales vendor for Swift’s tour, according to WKRN. However, experienced technical problems from the very beginning of the ticket sale process earlier this week with presale ticket purchases.
Greg Maffei, the CEO of Ticketmaster’s largest shareholder, Liberty Media, claimed on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that 14 million people tried to buy Taylor Swift presale tickets on Tuesday.
The presale ticket demand “could have filled 900 stadiums,” Maffei claimed.
In a Wednesday press conference following Ticketmaster’s presale disaster, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said his office would investigate whether the company might have a monopoly on the ticket sales market and may be abusing its customers, delivering a low-quality product because it has little market competition.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is scheduled for three shows at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium on May 5-7th, 2023.
Skrmetti said that Tennessee has chosen to take on the investigation because Nashville is a huge music market.
Additionally, on Thursday morning, Skrmetti exclusively told The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy that his office’s investigation into Ticketmaster is a “good example of the bread-and-butter consumer protection work that the [attorney general’s] office does.”
Swift also addressed the situation, signaling frustration with Ticketmaster’s failure to deliver for her fans.
#TaylorSwift issues statement regarding the Ticketmaster situation for her ‘Eras Tour’:
“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.” pic.twitter.com/2v37GShu0g
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) November 18, 2022
“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. 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,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Taylor Swift” by © Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com. CC BY-SA 4.0.
