The general sale for Taylor Swift‘s ‘The Eras Tour’ via Ticketmaster has been pulled at the last minute due to “extraordinarily high demand”.

Ticketmaster announced today (November 17) that its planned general sale tomorrow (November 18) for Swift’s 2023 North American tour dates has been pulled owing to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand”.

Pre-sales for Swift’s first tour since 2018 have already set a record with millions showing up to buy tickets. At least two million tickets were sold by Tuesday (November 15) in pre-sales for select groups – the most ever for an artist in a single day [via BBC News].

A spokesperson for Ticketmaster said that its website experienced “historically unprecedented demand” for tickets.

Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.

— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) November 17, 2022

Fans complained on social media of lengthy wait times and website outages when pre-sale tickets for Swift’s 52-date tour went on sale. As The Guardian reported, shortly after tickets went on sale, some were re-listed on sites such as StubHub for as much as $22,700 (£19,100) each.

BBC News has reported further that Ticketmaster claims that a “staggering number of bot attacks” overwhelmed its website.

Ticketmaster said that more than 3.5million “Swifties”, as her fans are known, registered in advance as “verified fans” in hopes of getting tickets for her 52-city tour in the pre-sale. The company also hosted a pre-sale for people carrying a credit card from Capital One, the company sponsoring the tour.

“While it’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on,” the company told the BBC.

Ticketmaster added that the pre-sale system is intended to help prevent ticket-touting.

‘The Eras Tour’ will be Swift’s sixth tour. Fans are seemingly particularly keen to get their hands on tickets because the pop behemoth hasn’t been able to tour since 2018 due to the COVID pandemic and has also released four albums since then.

It’s promised that the tour will include songs from all of Swift’s 10 albums over the years including her latest, ‘Midnights‘.

At the time of writing it’s not known if Ticketmaster will reschedule the general sale.

So far, Swift has only announced North American dates but a post on her website has confirmed that UK dates are to be announced.

Last week the singer added 17 new dates to her 2023 tour, including stops in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Chicago. She’d previously added eight extra dates due to demand.

Meanwhile, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has launched an investigation into Ticketmaster after numerous Swift fans reported issues with buying tickets.