On November 15, 2022, presale tickets for international pop star Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour went live on TicketMaster at 10 AM. Earlier in the month, millions of fans registered for the chance to receive a code to allow them access to the presale. Throughout the day on Monday, November 14, fans received texts and emails with their verification code for their selected venue and tour date. It was reported that Ticketmaster issued over 3 million verified presale codes to eager fans across the country. This large surplus of users on one website caused the website to crash multiple times and turned a simple one-hour task into a nine-hour headache for many fans.

     Taylor Swift announced her Ears Tour via Instagram on November 1, 2022. Originally, her plan was to only have 27 shows. She quickly realized that many shows wouldn’t suffice, and doubled the number to a total of 52 shows. The tour is set to kick off on March 17, 2023, in Glendale, Arizona, and finish on August 9, 2023, in Los Angeles, California. 

     Early on Tuesday morning, many fans awoke early to acquire tickets. Ticketmaster had posted online and requested that fans arrive 30 minutes prior to presale to wait in the waiting room. An hour before tickets went on sale, however, fans were met with a white page with an error message. Ticketmaster was down because it couldn’t handle the surplus of visitors on the site. Many fans grew anxious and worried they wouldn’t be able to get their tickets. 

     Ticketmaster address this issue via social media and instructed fans to log in to Ticketmaster through the link that was provided in the text message with their code. This solved the issue for many fans and they once again began anxiously waiting.

     Many shows in the eastern time zone had little to no issue acquiring tickets, and some fans even had tickets in a little twenty-five minutes. When central time zone tickets went on sale, however, everything changed. Millions of fans joined the waiting room early and were put into the queue for tickets shortly after 10 AM. Barely even twenty minutes later, Ticketmaster paused the queue. Fans waited patiently, as this happens sometimes for popular artists. Eventually, an hour passed. One hour quickly turned into nearly three hours, and Ticketmaster finally addressed the issue via social media.

     Fans were enraged. Many wondered how a company isn’t prepared for a large demand for tickets when they’re the ones that sent out codes. The website continued to crash and randomly threw millions of fans out of the queue throughout the day. The queue finally moved after being paused for two and a half hours. 

     The line moved very slowly. Fans barely moved one thousand spots in the queue after an hour. As fans were allowed into the actual sale and were able to select tickets, Ticketmaster continuously kicked out users and caused them to lose their tickets and place them in line. By the time users were able to make it through the queue, many venues such as Gilette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts had completely sold out of tickets. 

     It took some fans seven and a half hours to secure tickets to the concerts. Many verified fans were not able to get tickets because Ticketmaster reportedly crashed over 5000 times throughout the day Tuesday. After the Capital One Presale event on Wednesday, November 15, 2022, there were no presale tickets available after two hours. 

     Many fans are hoping for a smoother and more reliable way to buy tickets in the future. In the meantime, Ticketmaster needs some serious improvements.