WASHINGTON — Taylor Swift's highly anticipated Eras Tour caused more than a meltdown on Ticketmaster's website: It shattered the record for ticket sales for one artist in a day.
Ticketmaster sold more than 2 million tickets on Tuesday during the Verified Fan pre-sale, an unprecedented demand that caused outrage among fans and even some government officials.
Bot attacks and fans without invitation codes caused traffic overload during Ticketmaster's pre-sale events earlier this week, according to the company's explanation on Thursday.
"Never before has a Verified Fan on sale sparked so much attention – or uninvited volume. This disrupted the predictability and reliability that is the hallmark of our Verified Fan platform," the company said in a statement.
The live entertainment company saw 3.5 billion total system requests -- four times more than the previous peak. Fans experienced long wait times and passcode validation errors, which led many fans to lose tickets they had carted.
"While it’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on,” the company said in Thursday's statement.
Hours later, Ticketmaster announced on Twitter it would cancel the general public sale due to "insufficient remaining ticket inventory" and "extraordinarily high demands."
Ticketmaster did not expand on whether the sale would be rescheduled.
In order to manage shows with high demands, Ticketmaster offers the Verified Fan pre-sale, a feature that helps weed out bots from the waiting list.
Fans sign up days in advance for a chance to receive a code on the day of the pre-sale. More than 3.5 million people pre-registered for Swift's Eras Tour, and only about 1.5 million got invitation codes. The remaining 2 million were put on a waiting list, sparking fan outrage.
“Even when a high demand on sale goes flawlessly from a tech perspective, many fans are left empty handed,” Ticketmaster said. “For example: based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)… that’s a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years.”
Additionally, Ticketmaster clarified that it will not resell tickets to Swift's shows at this time. Meanwhile, tickets on resale sites such as StubHub are fetching astronomical prices.
Front row tickets for Swift's concert at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 30 are listed for as much as $28,350 each on the resale site.
The Eras Tour is the singer's first tour since 2018, resulting in an overwhelming demand to snag tickets.
Aside from fan outrage, the Ticketmaster controversy garnered attention from lawmakers. Tennessee's attorney general said on Wednesday that his office plans to investigate consumer complaints about Ticketmaster after the website crashed under a surge of millions of Taylor Swift fans -- many of whom ended up ticketless.
"He and his Consumer Protection team will use every tool to ensure that no consumer protection laws were violated," a news release from Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti's office said.
Ticketmaster has not been accused of any actual misconduct.
Megan Divers contributed to this report.