Taylor Swift Proves Too Big for Ticketmaster, Again

Taylor Swift’s European fans could be set for a cruel summer.

Ticketmaster halted sales for some dates of the European leg of the pop star’s “Eras Tour” after some fans were unable to access the site, in the latest high-profile ticket snafu for the company. Ticketmaster said issues with a third-party provider, which it didn’t name, disrupted the sale Tuesday.

The ticket seller stopped the sale of tickets for six shows at Paris’s La Défense Arena and Lyon’s Groupama Stadium on Tuesday. Tickets for the shows are still available and will go on sale again, Ticketmaster said.

Frustrated fans posted on social media that they were able to pick out seats, but got error messages when they tried to log into their Ticketmaster accounts to pay for the tickets.

“Some of you may be having issues with the site this morning – we are working on it and will let you know,” the company wrote on Twitter shortly after tickets went on sale Tuesday morning. About an hour later Ticketmaster tweeted that sales of tickets for Paris and Lyon had been stopped.
 

Swift is currently playing shows on the 52-date U.S. leg of a world tour that will include more than 100 shows across five continents. She is booked to play four dates in Paris in May, and two dates in Lyon, a city in southeastern France, in June.

Such is the hype around the tour that fans had been waiting online to snap up tickets for hours. There were more than 900,000 hopefuls in the queue at 5 a.m. ET Tuesday.

Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation Entertainment LYV 0.96%increase; green up pointing triangle, has been plagued by glitches in the past. Last year, Swift canceled the general sale for her U.S. shows after the presale saw overwhelming demand and crashed Ticketmaster’s systems.

Ticketmaster said the cancellation was due to high demand and “insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.” Swift called the debacle “excruciating.”

Ticketmaster later apologized for the situation. “We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans—especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets,” the company said in a statement, adding that it was working to improve its technology.

The “Eras Tour” could be on track to become the biggest in history, with the potential to gross over $1 billion. That milestone would break the record for global concert tours currently held by Elton John and could up the ante for an era of even higher ticket prices, show grosses and concert-industry revenues.

—Joseph Pisani contributed to this article.