Ticketmaster has as soon as once more cracked below the load of a Taylor Swift ticket sale — this time in France.

As French followers ready on Tuesday to buy tickets to 6 live shows in May and June 2024 on Swift’s Eras Tour — four shows in Paris, two in Lyon — Ticketmaster’s web site displayed a big queue of shoppers prepared to purchase; one screenshot appeared to inform a fan that 1,023,504 customers had been in line forward of them.

Soon, Ticketmaster announced that gross sales for these reveals had been positioned on “pause.” The firm gave no rationalization, however stated {that a} new on-sale time can be introduced, and that “all codes not already used will remain valid.” But some followers’ social media posts appeared to point out technical errors on Ticketmaster’s web site, together with a progress icon that “keeps spinning and spinning and spinning,” as one fan — talking English with an American accent, however with 762 euros’ price of tickets of their procuring cart — put it.

Representatives of Ticketmaster and its company dad or mum, the live performance large Live Nation Entertainment, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

The scenario in France gave the impression to be a irritating repeat of the problems that plagued Swift’s North American presale in November, when an inflow of hundreds of thousands of followers — and bots — overwhelmed Ticketmaster’s techniques, and followers reported points like tickets of their procuring carts disappearing earlier than they might be bought. Ticketmaster shut down its public sale in consequence, although the corporate additionally said it had bought greater than two million tickets to the tour in a single day.

Problems like these at Swift’s presale in November — in addition to long-simmering considerations over Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s market dominance — led to a brutal Senate Judiciary hearing in January. Senators from each events flatly referred to as the corporate a monopoly and had been skeptical of an govt’s rationalization that Ticketmaster was unable to defend itself towards an onslaught of bots throughout Swift’s presale.

“This is unbelievable,” Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, stated on the listening to. “Why is it,” she added, “that you have not developed an algorithm to sort out what is a bot and what is a consumer?”

Yet the demand for Swift tickets has been extraordinary, with Swift promoting out stadiums in all places she performs and tickets going for 1000’s of {dollars} on the secondary market. She is scheduled to finish the North American leg of her tour subsequent month, then play in Latin America, Asia and Europe.

The Justice Department has individually been conducting an antitrust investigation of Live Nation. The Justice Department has not confirmed that investigation, however Live Nation’s chief govt, Michael Rapino, has spoken about it brazenly.