Is TicketMaster a Monopoly?
After the release of her “Midnights” album in October, Taylor Swift announced her upcoming and biggest tour on November 1st, via an Instagram post. “The Eras Tour” is expected to kick in on March 23, 2023 and consists of 52 stops with multiple nights in a few cities. However, when many fans were not lucky enough to purchase tickets for Swift’s first tour in the last five years, they turned to social media to explain their anger and disappointment about how Ticketmaster has poor customer service, long wait times, technical issues like glitches in the website, and unbelievably high resell and additional prices.
During the pre-sale that took place on November 15th, which requires previous registration, Ticketmaster’s website crashed due to high demand. According to the statement of Ticketmaster, over 3.5 million people registered for the pre-sale, making it the largest one in history. About 1.5 million of those who pre-registered were sent a code for the sale while the remaining 2 million people were placed on a waitlist. However, that day, Ticketmaster received 3.5 billion system requests, which caused the website to crash. The crash also affected those who were in the process of purchasing the tickets by kicking them out. A day later, Ticketmaster suddenly canceled the public sale of the tickets, i.e., allowing the purchase of the remaining tickets by anyone. It is yet to be known whether Ticketmaster is going to reschedule the public on-sale.
“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times if they couldhandle this kind of demand and we were assured they could…it really pisses me off that a lot of them [fans] feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them [tickets]”, Swift wrote in an Instagram story on November 18th.
Despite the various issues customers faced, over 2 million tickets were sold on Ticketmaster for the tour.
This is not the first time that there are complaints about Ticketmaster. On January 25, 2010, Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged and became subsidiaries to Live Nation Entertainment. At the time, the Department of Justice claimed that the merger would increase the competition and lead to lower ticket prices. On the contrary, years later, there is an incredible increase in the prices due to a lack of competition. The long-standing issue managed to get attention from political figures, including Senator Amy Klobuchar and Representative Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, as well. Both Klobuchar and Cortez claim that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, a market structure in which a single seller dominates the industry. While Cortez tweeted: “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never been approved, and they need to be reigned in. Break them up”, Klobuchar wrote a letter to Ticketmaster President and CEO Michael Rapino explaining that the lack of competition in the industry could lead to failure in providing proper customer service and lack of incentive for innovation.
It is reported that after the pre-sale controversy, DOJ has opened an anti-trust investigation to Live Nation Entertainment, the owner company of Ticketmaster, under the claims that Live Nation Entertainment has abused its position in the industry. As a response, however, the company announced that it “takes its responsibilities under the antitrust laws seriously and does not engage in behaviors that could justify antitrust litigation”. Furthermore, the company claims that Ticketmaster “has a significant share of the primary ticketing services market because of the large gap that exists between the quality of the Ticketmaster system and the next best primary ticketing system”.
Regardless of the investigation, a Citigroup Managing Director Jason Bazinet states that a breakup between Live Nation and Ticketmaster is very unlikely.
Sources:
Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Onsale Explained
Live Nation, Ticketmaster may need breakup, some senators say
Justice Dept. Is Said to Investigate Ticketmaster’s Parent Company
A Statement from Live Nation Entertainment
AOC Blasts Ticketmaster as a ‘Monopoly’ During Frozen Sale of Taylor Swift Tickets
Sorry, Swifties: Citi Analyst Deems a Live Nation/Ticketmaster Breakup Unlikely
Ticketmaster cancels public sale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour due to overwhelming demand