Flooded with "historically unprecedented demand" Tuesday, Ticketmaster urged Taylor Swift fans to be patient and pushed back some presales.
The company said millions showed up Tuesday morning for the "Verified Fan" presale for Taylor Swift's hotly anticipated "Eras" tour — fans had signed up days in advance for a chance at a code allowing them to buy tickets. The sale started at 10 a.m. local time, and issues seemed to pop up immediately for many in the Eastern and Central time zones.
Fans flooded Twitter, sharing screenshots of error messages and asking the ticket-buying platform for help. "Ticketmaster" was among the top of Twitter's trending list Tuesday morning, and reports that the site was having issues spiked on DownDetector.
"We are aware fans may be experiencing intermittent issues with the site and are urgently working to resolve," Ticketmaster's support account posted.
Later, it shared a statement about the "historically unprecedented demand" for the presale. While "hundreds of thousands of tickets" had been sold, Ticketmaster acknowledged fans' frustration with long digital lines: "If you are currently in a queue, please hang tight - queues are moving and we are working to get fans through as quickly as possible."
However, Ticketmaster said it was pushing back sales five hours for the West Coast and rescheduling a separate presale for Capital One cardholders. Sales for shows in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Santa Clara and Seattle were rescheduled to 3 p.m. Pacific time, with queues opening a half hour beforehand.
The Capital One cardholder presale was moved back one day to Wednesday at 2 p.m. local venue time. After that, the next chance to buy tickets will be the official sale on Nov. 18.
Earlier, Ticketmaster encouraged fans to login and access the presale queue "through the link you received via text" instead of the site's homepage.
Ticketmaster's latest statement came as many fans were still frantically posting on social media, finding themselves in a "paused" digital queue of more than 2,000 people.
"The queue has been temporarily paused," an error message read. "Sorry for the inconvenience. It should be back up and running shortly. To keep your place in line, please don't refresh or close your browser."
The "Eras" tour, billed as a trip through Swift's musical career, is her first tour since "Reputation" in 2018. The singer has released several albums since then including her latest, "Midnights," which made her the first artist in history to claim the top 10 slots of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.