Millions of Taylor Swift followers swarmed Live Nation Entertainment Inc’s Ticketmaster web site on Tuesday in search of seats for her first tour in 5 years, inflicting periodic outages and lengthy on-line waits that always led to disappointment. The ticket-selling web site informed followers on Tuesday morning, by way of an announcement on Twitter, that it was experiencing “intermittent issues” that the corporate was “urgently” working to resolve.

Later, Ticketmaster tweeted that there had been “historically unprecedented demand” for Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” her first since 2018, from thousands and thousands of individuals. Ticket gross sales for West Coast reveals had been delayed by three hours. Fans reported ready in on-line queues for as much as eight hours, and lots of discovering they had been too late to buy tickets, which value between $49 and $449 every.

“I’m a failure as a father,” wrote Dave Pell, writer of the favored NextDraft e-newsletter. “The one time my daughter really needed me to come through for her, I ended up on the outside looking in, banished to the barren badlands of the Taylor Swift ticket ready record wasteland,” he mentioned.

Other Swifties, the nickname for Swift’s followers, mentioned they had been repeatedly dropped from queues and turned their ire towards Ticketmaster. Some mentioned they took a time without work work and felt the method ought to have gone extra easily. A Ticketmaster spokesperson mentioned the quantity of people that registered for the early sale was greater than twice the variety of tickets out there, and that thousands and thousands of others additionally jumped on-line to purchase.

“This caused some delays for fans which we know is frustrating and we worked as quickly as possible to adjust some on sale times to manage the volume, and queues are now flowing,” the spokesperson mentioned. A Democratic U.S. lawmaker additionally criticized the corporate.

“@Ticketmaster’s excessive wait times and fees are completely unacceptable, as seen with today’s @taylorswift13 tickets,” Rep. David Cicilline wrote on Twitter. He added that the 2010 merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which had Justice Department approval, mustn’t have been allowed. “It’s no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly,” he mentioned.

Cicilline, who chairs the House of Representatives antitrust panel, known as on the Justice Department to analyze. The company declined to remark. The ticketing trade has pissed off Americans for years with hidden charges, restricted ticket availability due to pre-sales, and different irritations.

Waits of a number of hours additionally had been reported on ticket vendor SeatGeek, which was promoting tickets to Swift reveals in Arlington, Texas, and Glendale, Arizona. SeatGeek mentioned it, too, skilled excessive demand and urged followers to “please be patient.” Hundreds of 1000’s of individuals did seize tickets to Swift’s tour, Ticketmaster mentioned. Another presale, for Capital One bank card holders, was postponed from Tuesday to Wednesday.

Swift launched her newest album, the pop file “Midnights,” in October. She has promised hits from albums spanning her profession on the “Eras” tour. The U.S. tour is scheduled to start out in March and finish in August. Some consumers already had been trying to money in on the fervor. Resale websites similar to Stubhub had been providing seats on Tuesday afternoon for as a lot as $18,000 every.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)