Ticketmaster issued an apology following a flurry of Taylor Swift fans rushing to purchase tickets to her upcoming The Eras Tour, The Hill reported.
"We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans — especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets," the company wrote in a tweet.
The company also said it wanted to explain what happened after numerous users reported the website crashing or for the hours-long wait times some experienced while trying to purchase tickets.
Ticketmaster said it knew fan interest in tickets would be large, in part because "[o]ver 3.5 million people pre-registered for TaylorSwiftTix Presale ... which is the largest registration in history."
Roughly 40% of fans buy their tickets during presale, and most purchase three tickets on average, the company said. Subsequently, "around 1.5 million people were sent codes to join the onsale for all 52 show dates, including the 47 sold by Ticketmaster." But the remaining "2 million Verified Fans were placed on a waiting list on the small chance that tickets might still be available after those who received codes had shopped."
Ticketmaster said it usually had been able to manage a large volume on the site, but the "staggering" number of bots plus the number of users who did not have codes "broke records — and parts of our website."
In response, the company said it had to slow down some sales and push back on others to stabilize the system, which led to longer wait times.
Swift commented on her Instagram, saying it "pisses [her] off" that many of her fans "feel like they went through several bear attacks" to get their hands on tickets. And that "it's really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties."
Despite the issues, Ticketmaster says more than 2 million tickets were sold on Tuesday.