Ticketmaster halts Taylor Swift ticket sales in France, cites issue with third-party provider

The trouble between Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras’ tour isn’t over – and the latest glitch has implications for fans hoping for tickets in France.

Sales for six of Swift’s upcoming shows in Paris and Lyon were abruptly postponed after some fans reported problems accessing Ticketmaster’s website on Tuesday. An explanation wasn’t immediately clear, but in posts on Ticketmaster’s French Twitter channel several hours after the break began, the ticket seller cited an issue with a third-party provider.

Ticketmaster referred The Associated Press to the Twitter statement. In the posts, Ticketmaster claimed that tickets for the shows in France were still available and that the provider was “working to resolve this matter as soon as possible”.

The company added that all codes not used for ticket purchases on Tuesday will remain valid – and that affected fans will be “directly notified of the new presale date and time.” The new times have yet to be determined.

Tuesday’s chaos comes after Ticketmaster’s spectacular collapse in sales of tickets for the ‘Eras’ tour in the US last November – when Ticketmaster’s website crashed during a pre-sale event for Swift’s stadium tour and thousands of people lost their tickets after they waited for hours in an online queue.

At the time, the company said its website was being inundated with both fans and attacks by bots posing as consumers to snag tickets and sell them on secondary sites. The company later apologized “to Taylor and all of her fans — especially those who had a horrible experience buying tickets.”

Swift expressed his frustration on behalf of fans in November, noting on Instagram that “it was excruciating for me just to watch mistakes happen without recourse.”

Several lawmakers accused Ticketmaster of abusing its power as the dominant consumer ticket seller. And both federal and state agencies began investigating the fiasco.

Ticketmaster, which merged with Live Nation in 2010, is the world’s largest ticket seller, processing 500 million tickets each year in more than 30 countries. About 70% of major concert hall tickets in the US are sold through Ticketmaster, according to a federal lawsuit filed by consumers last year.

Outrage at the ticket seller flared up again on Tuesday after ticket sales for France were postponed.

“Ticketmaster is a poorly run company and its bad practices stem in part from its position as a monopolist in the concert ticketing space,” Shubha Ghosh, a Syracuse University law professor who specializes in antitrust law, said in a statement.

Swift is currently completing her 52-date US tour, which is scheduled to conclude with shows in Los Angeles in early August. Their international shows begin August 24th in Mexico City. Four concerts are planned in Paris in May 2024 and two concerts in Lyon next June.