Bot-driven traffic overload disrupts Ticketmaster Taylor Swift ticket sales

On November 15, 2022, Ticketmaster experienced severe disruption during the presale for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. Ticketmaster reported that extraordinary volumes of automated bot attacks, combined with heavy traffic from users without presale access codes and legitimate demand, generated approximately 3.5 billion system requests. The traffic overwhelmed parts of its ticketing infrastructure, forcing the company to slow certain sales, postpone others and manage prolonged customer queues. Ticketmaster estimated that approximately 15 percent of website interactions experienced problems, including verification errors that caused customers to lose tickets held in shopping carts. The incident materially disrupted the company's online ticket-sales process, although record ticket sales still occurred. Bot activity was one of several documented contributors rather than the sole established cause of the overload.