Ticketmaster cancels public sale for Taylor Swift tour after widespread pre-sale issues

Ticketmaster on Thursday canceled the public sale of tickets for an upcoming Taylor Swift tour after customers reported widespread issues purchasing tickets during a pre-sale event.

“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 tweeted.

Customers have reported a number of issues for the pre-sale event, which are tickets available for exclusive users before release to the general public, including the website freezing or crashing.

The company reportedly had up to 14 million people and bots in the website on Tuesday, when it was only supposed to open up to 1.5 million users in the pre-sale, a stakeholder in Ticketmaster told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday.

Amid the ticket sale chaos, at least two lawmakers have raised concerns about Ticketmaster, which merged with Live Nation in 2010 to become Live Nation Entertainment and now dominates ticket sales for the live music industry.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) sent a letter to Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino on Thursday expressing “serious concerns” about the company abusing its market position and violating an antitrust consent decree.

Tennessee’s attorney general has also launched an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment, noting that the company dominates 70 percent of the live music industry.

In a Tuesday update, Ticketmaster said there was a “historically unprecedented demand” for the Swift tour and that it was working to clear queues and backlogs as quickly as possible.

The company at the time said hundreds of thousands of tickets had been sold.