Taylor Swift blows a kiss during the European MTV Awards 2022 in Dusseldorf, Germany on Sunday. Martin Meissner/Associated Press

Ticketmaster announced Thursday afternoon that it was halting public tickets sales of Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour on Friday due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory” to meet demand.

A mad rush this week for tickets to Swift’s tour crashed parts of Ticketmaster’s website and left fans waiting for hours to buy tickets.

The episode sparked calls to break up the large ticketing company, which some critics have accused of having a monopoly in online ticket sales. The company has cited extraordinary demand for Swift’s tour and tried to pace the rollout of tickets.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said Wednesday that his office has received complaints from people who tried purchasing tickets through Ticketmaster, and said he would look into whether the website violated consumers’ rights and antitrust regulations.

In a lengthy post published Thursday, Ticketmaster explained that “this time the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests” — four-times its previous web traffic peak.