Taylor Swift tour ticket sales cancelled by Ticketmaster after ‘extraordinarily high demands’
Ticketmaster has cancelled ticket sales for the US leg of Taylor Swift’s tour due to “insufficient ticket inventory” to meet “extraordinarily high demands”.
General ticket sales for Swift’s Eras Tour, her first in five years, were planned to open on Friday morning.
But Ticketmaster tweeted on Thursday evening that due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand”, Friday’s sale has been cancelled.
The decision comes days after the presale for the tour caused the site to crash, leaving many fans frustrated and unable to get tickets.
The ticket company had previously asked fans on Twitter to be patient as “millions” tried to buy tickets in the presale, causing “historically unprecedented demand”.
Swift’s fans, known as Swifties, have criticised the company on social media after encountering long wait times and site outages during the presales for the tour which opened on Tuesday.
Fans reported waiting in online queues for up to eight hours, with many finding they were too late to purchase tickets, which cost between $49 (£41) and $449 (£377) each.
In a statement on Thursday, Ticketmaster said it had anticipated heavy demand for tickets, adding that a record 3.5 million people had registered as verified fans.
The company said it had planned to invite 1.5 million of those to participate in the sale for all 52 show dates, including the 47 sold by Ticketmaster, with the other 2 million placed on a waiting list.
But the plan, it said, was undermined by attacks by “bots” – automated software requests – and demand from those who had not previously registered.
“The staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our
site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak,” Ticketmaster said.
“Never before has a Verified Fan on sale sparked so much attention – or uninvited volume.”
Swift took home four MTV EMA awards this year
Ticketmaster, which overwhelmingly dominates the ticketing industry, has for years left fans and artists frustrated by hidden fees, soaring costs, and limited tickets availability due to presales.
In a letter to Ticketmaster parent Live Nation Entertainment Inc this week, Senator Amy Klobuchar voiced “serious concern about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers”.
Swift has not publicly commented on the matter.
The American leg of the 32-year-old singer’s tour will kick off on 18 March in Glendale, Arizona and end in August.
Swift will be joined by a number of artists during the tour including bands Paramore and Haim, and solo artists like Phoebe Bridgers.
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Swift’s latest album Midnights, released in October, claimed the biggest first week of album sales since Adele’s 30 was released last November.
It also took the title of the most streamed album of the year in its opening week with 72.5 million streams across the seven days.
Taylor Swift has revealed the release date for her new album, The Life Of A Showgirl.
The pop megastar announced her 12th studio album earlier this week but didn’t give many details.
Now, in social media posts and an appearance on boyfriend Travis Kelce’s sports podcast, Swift revealed just what fans can expect from the new album.
Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce on the New Heights podcast. Pic: New Heights
The Life of Showgirl, written during the European leg of her record-breaking Eras tour, will be released on 3 October.
It consists of 12 songs, including the title track that features pop star Sabrina Carpenter.
The full track list is:
1. The Fate Of Ophelia
2. Elizabeth Taylor
3. Opalite
4. Father Figure
5. Eldest Daughter
6. Ruin The Friendship
7. Actually Romantic
8. Wi$h Li$t
9. Wood
10. Cancelled!
11. Honey
12. The Life Of A Showgirl (featuring Sabrina Carpenter)
Long-time collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, two Swedish producers who worked with Swift on some of her biggest hits, joined the pop star for this album.
Within four hours of posting the full podcast episode on YouTube, it had already gathered 4.7m views.
The cover of Taylor Swift’s newly announced album. Pic: Republic Records
The back cover of Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album The Life Of A Showgirl. Pic: Republic Records
‘The hardest-working star in pop’
The album follows last year’s The Tortured Poets Department, which was released during the Eras tour.
That tour, with shows on five continents and in 51 cities, raked in more than $2.2bn (£1.62bn) and was the highest-grossing tour of all time.
Read more about Taylor Swift:
Swift’s final London show was the ‘best’
The impact of the ‘excruciating’ Era’s tour
Her new chart record
“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” Swift said during her podcast appearance.
Sky News culture and entertainment reporter Gemma Peplow said after her globe-trotting tour and a swathe of re-releases over recent years, the new album cemented Swift’s reputation “as the hardest-working star in pop”.
Disgraced US film producer Harvey Weinstein is to be tried for a third time in a sexual assault case.
A jury in New York could not reach a verdict in June against the 73-year-old who was accused of raping actress Jessica Mann, and a mistrial was declared.
Judge Curtis Farber has said he wants the new trial to happen before the end of this year.
The same jury found Weinstein guilty in June of sexually assaulting former Project Runway production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and not guilty of assaulting Polish former runway model Kaja Sokola the same year.
Weinstein will be sentenced for the guilty verdict in Ms Haley’s case on 30 September.
He denied all of the charges. Throughout the retrial, his lawyers insisted the sexual encounters with his three accusers were “transactional” and “consensual,” and labelled the women as opportunists.
Weinstein was originally convicted of rape and criminal sexual act by the same court in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison for the crimes.
Last year, however, New York’s highest court overturned the conviction, prompting Weinstein’s retrial this summer.
Weinstein was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood – the co-founder of film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, who produced films such as the Oscar-winning Shakespeare In Love, Pulp Fiction, and The Crying Game.
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In 2017, a series of sexual misconduct allegations against him propelled the #MeToo movement.
Some of those accusations later led to criminal charges and his convictions in New York and California.
Before the retrial, Weinstein was also serving a 16-year prison sentence after being found guilty of rape in California in December 2022. He has also denied this charge.
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