I, like many other Taylor Swift fans, was frustrated and quite frankly angry when I was unable to obtain tickets to her “Eras” tour, especially after Ticketmaster announced that they would cancel November 18’s general-public sale just a day before it was supposed to take place. They cited “extraordinarily high demands on ticket systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory” as the explanation. This left presale as the only sale (for now) of tickets. For several fans (including me), the general-public sale was the only chance at getting tickets to the tour. 

After years of delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic, presale tickets opened for “Verified Fans'' on Tuesday November 15, leading to a “historically unprecedented demand” in which over 2 million tickets were sold. However, this rush led to numerous glitches (including people losing their tickets in the carts and getting kicked out of the queue), long wait times and queues (some with over 2,000 people), and of course, thousands of upset fans. “i literally cannot understate how disappointing this has been like i waited in the queue and FINALLY got in only to be told that i cannot buy a single ticket because their codes broke. it sucks,” one fan tweeted. In a statement, Ticketmaster blamed a “staggering number of bot attacks” as well as “unprecedented traffic” due to fans who didn’t have codes still attempting to buy tickets, resulting in 3.5 billion system requests, as the reason behind the technical difficulties. 

After Ticketmaster’s brief tweet announcing the general-public sale cancellation, an influx of backlash rolled in from fans. “why is a company as big as Ticketmaster having trouble with the one thing it does as a business?” tweeted one frustrated fan. 

This debacle has caused several criticisms of Ticketmaster to arise, in which critics allege that they disproportionately control the ticketing industry. Customers and consumer advocates alike detest the high fees on sales and the fact that Ticketmaster profits off of their secondary market site, which many say sanction the hoarding of tickets by price gougers and resellers. According to critics, there is no clear alternative to Ticketmaster, especially after their merge with the 2010 Ticketmaster-Live Nation merge. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted “Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in. Break them up.” 

This is a problem that began long before 2010’s Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger. In 1994, rock band Pearl Jam, one of the biggest music acts in the world at that time, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster after being prompted by the Justice Department. The band claimed that Ticketmaster was abusing their power in the ticket industry by charging high service fees and signing exclusive deals with several concert venues, which left several customers with Ticketmaster as their only option. Thanks to Ticketmaster-hired-lobbyists, a bill requiring that ticket service fees be spelled out on all stubs was defeated. Soon thereafter, the Justice Department closed their investigation. 

Due to the recent incident, the Justice Department announced a new investigation on November 18 that would focus on the question of whether Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, has a monopoly over the industry and is abusing their power within it. According to the New York Times, the Justice Department’s antitrust division has recently contacted other music participants in the ticketing industry and several live music venues to learn more about the company’s ticketing methods. 

Adding onto this investigation, Senator Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, stated that the Senate would hold a bipartisan hearing on the issue, citing the company as anti-competition. She also said that the company is “the story of a monopoly gone wild.” Klobuchar announced that she had sent a letter to Michael Rapino, Ticketmaster president and CEO, expressing her concern about company practices and their lack of competition. Klobuchar wrote, “Ticketmaster's power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services. That can result in the types of dramatic service failures we saw this week, where consumers are the ones that pay the price." She also asked Rapino to respond, by Wednesday, November 23, to a set of five questions. The questions asked included the amount of tickets that Ticketmaster saved for presale vs. the amount of tickets listed for the general public sale, how much money they spent on upgrading its platform systems to meet surges in demand, and if Rapino remained “confident” that his plan to create an “easy-access, one-stop platform” that will be a “trusted business partner” is working, if they knew of any complaints made in the past year that they were non-compliant with the consent decree  it entered when the merger with Live Nation was approved, and finally, if any of Ticketmaster’s board of directors was given any information about decree compliance in the past three years and if they had, to share materials with her. 

Attorney generals in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Tennessee would also open respective investigations. Pennsylvania’s attorney general Josh Shapiro tweeted: “Having trouble using Ticketmaster? Pennsylvanians experiencing problems using the site should submit a complaint to my office.”  Nevada’s Attorney General Office also tweeted: “Our office has received consumer complaints regarding the recent issues with Ticketmaster, and we are investigating the company for alleged deceptive or unfair trade practices.” Attorney general of Tennessee, Jonathan Skrmetti, told reporters that “[t]here are no allegations at this time of any misconduct, but as the attorney general it’s my job to ensure that the consumer protection laws and antitrust laws in Tennessee are being honored.”

On the flip side of the issue, some backlash has also come out against Taylor Swift herself, with several fans on twitter calling her “little miss capitalist.” Eric Budish, an economics professor at the University of Chicago told The Washington Post that he believes that Ticketmaster is “a punching bag.” He noted that the artist is typically the one who makes the most money off of ticket-sale profits, and that they often play a role in choosing how to price tickets. Budish stated that it was very possible that dynamic pricing, in which tickets are priced according to demand, was used. He also pointed out that Swift, along with Ticketmaster, has the power to control ticket resales. The system that he believes would be most appropriate for Swift would be “paperless ticketing”, in which the artist can set the price to one deemed fair and restrict the resale market by putting names on the tickets. Budish said that Swift “could’ve chosen that, and she didn’t…It would not be as profitable.” Several fans also criticized her slow response that addressed the difficulties it took to get tickets, but not the pricing. 

On Friday, November 18, via her Instagram story, Swift shared a response to the debacle and apologized to her fans. Swift restates: “I’m extremely protective of my fans”, and that she feels that it’s been “excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.” Swift writes: “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.” She expresses that “it’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.” For those who didn't get tickets, Swift writes that she hopes “to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs.” 

Ticketmaster also addressed the situation on Twitter on November 18. They apologized to Swift and her fans, “especially to those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets.” They shared a post on their website and Twitter to share information about the issue. They explained 3.5 million people registered for the presale (the largest registration in history) and that 1.5 million people were sent presale codes while the remaining 2 million were placed on a waitlist incase tickets were still available after presale. They also explained that they had never had that much traffic on the website before (4x their previous peak) which they were not prepared for. Overall they estimated that 15% of people had experienced technical difficulties. They stated that less than 5% of the tickets had been sold or posted for resale on the secondary market. They hypothesized that “Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she’s doing)” based on the amount of traffic on the site. They clarified that “we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on.” 

Although it is unclear what will happen in the future of the Ticketmaster investigation or the “Eras” tour ticket opportunities, one thing IS clear: live music is inherently suffering from a difference between supply and demand. The biggest artists are overwhelmed with demand, leaving fans feeling frustrated and betrayed. In the meantime, Ticketmaster had better relook at its system. Who knows what will happen?