On Tuesday, November 15^th 14 million people logged in to Ticketmaster attempting to purchase Taylor Swift “Eras” tour tickets. Swift hasn’t toured since her “Reputation” tour” five years ago and is one the world’s most famous pop stars, so the demand for her tickets were high. To combat the demand, Ticketmaster sent out a pre-sale code to 1.5 million “verified fans.” Obviously the attempt failed when a historic number of people got onto the site, causing it to crash multiple times throughout the day.

On November 1^st, Swift announced her “Eras” tour on her social medias, including 27 tour dates stretching across the United States. Only four days later, Taylor Nation revealed that eight more American shows were added; on November 11^th, four days before the pre-sale, Taylor added 17 more shows. Altogether, Swift revealed 52 shows across the States.

A day before the pre-sale, which began on Tuesday, November 15^th, fans who signed up for a pre-sale code were either granted with a relieving email or a heart-crushing one. Some fans were waitlisted, but who were thought to be “lucky” fans received a code. The next morning, the fans that got the code would be hit with the awful and nerve-racking war against Ticketmaster.

The chaos began when fans got on to Ticketmaster at 10 a.m. The queue read that there were 2,000 people in front of them for hours. What seemed to be the issue was that Ticketmaster’s “pre-sale” codes were not actually required to get into the queue. With so many people and bots on the website, the site crashed for some, multiple times, before users could finally make an attempt at purchasing tickets. After spending hours on Ticketmaster, most fans left empty-handed.

One fan, Anna Twigg, states that the experience was extremely stressful. “The person buying my tickets was kicked off of the site multiple times. At one point, she was even kicked off while purchasing the tickets. It led me to feel doubtful, but we ended up getting some of the last seats at a Pittsburg show,” Twigg explains. Unlike Anna Twigg, most fans were not as fortunate and were left feeling like their time was wasted.

Ticketmaster did issue an apology which lightly explains what happened. The apology, which was posted on Twitter, states, “Never before has a Verified Fan on sale sparked so much attention – or traffic. This disrupted the predictability and reliability that is the hallmark of our Verified Fan platform.” Almost directly after the Capital-One Sale (which went no smoother than the pre-sale), Ticketmaster announced the cancelation of general sale, leaving fans furious. Ticketmaster is now faced with multiple lawsuits. These lawsuits accuse Ticketmaster of price-fixing, fraud, and more.

Taylor eventually broke her silence on the Ticketmaster debacle. On her social media she explains, “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. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really angers me that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.” Swift also adds that her hope is to provide more opportunities “for us to all get together and sing these songs,” but as of now she has not added any additional shows.