Live Nation chairman says 14 million people were trying to access Taylor Swift tickets in presale

Presale tickets for Taylor Swift's The Eras tour went on sale on Tuesday (15 November), and Ticketmaster had issues hosting the millions of fans that wanted tickets, leading to the site crashing and leaving many fans unable to get early tickets.

After Ticketmaster shared a statement addressing the situation, revealing that there had been "historically unprecedented demand" for tickets, Liberty Media CEO and Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei has addressed the situation on CNBC.

"Well first, all the Live Nation team is sympathetic that the long wait times and [to] fans who couldn't get what they wanted. Reality is, it's a function of the massive demand that Taylor Swift has. The site was supposed to be opened up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans. We had 14 million people hit the site - including bots, another story, which are not supposed to be there, and despite all the challenges and the breakdowns we did sell over two million tickets that day."

He added, " We could have filled 900 stadiums."

Liberty Media CEO and Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei responds to the Taylor Swift ticket fiasco: “I apologize to all our fans. We are working hard on this.” https://t.co/C8ATt6B2Kn pic.twitter.com/4bePfAtdxz

— CNBC (@CNBC) November 17, 2022

Swift announced The Eras tour at the start of the month. Currently, there's only US dates available with support from Paramore, Phoebe Bridgers, Haim, MUNA, girl in red, Beabadoobee, GAYLE, Gracie Abrams and OWENN. She confirmed at the time that "international dates" will be "announced as soon as we can."