A group of 26 Taylor Swift fans are suing Ticketmaster over last month’s box office fiasco that left frustrated users unable to purchase tickets for Swift’s The Eras tour (via Deadline). In a lawsuit in a California court, fans are accusing Ticketmaster’s parent company, LiveNation, of “anti-competitive conduct” that allowed resellers to oversell tickets, driving up ticket prices for fans who could actually get their hands on it.
In addition to alleging that Ticketmaster requires fans to “exclusively” use the service to purchase tickets at prices “above what a competitive market price would be,” the lawsuit claims that Ticketmaster also profits from the resale of those tickets. Notes through its secondary market. As noted on Ticketmaster’s website, the company adds a service fee to each ticket sold on its fan-to-fan exchange – but does not specify how much – which is paid by the buyer in addition to the ticket price. The lawsuit claims that Ticketmaster “conspired” with stadiums “to force fans to purchase more expensive tickets for which Ticketmaster collects additional fees each time the tickets are resold.”
He also takes issue with how Ticketmaster distributed presale codes that fans had to use to purchase tickets. The lawsuit says the company “intentionally and deliberately misled TaylorSwiftTix presale ticket holders by providing codes to 1.4 million ‘verified fans'” when in fact it did not have enough seats for everybody. According to Ticketmaster, 3.5 million people pre-registered as verified fans to gain access to the sale, but 2 million of those fans had to be put on a waitlist to have any chance of picking up the tickets. remaining.
“Millions of fans waited for up to eight hours and were unable to purchase tickets due to an insufficient number of available tickets”
“Millions of fans waited up to eight hours and were unable to purchase tickets due to an insufficient number of tickets,” the lawsuit states. “Ticketmaster intentionally provided codes when it couldn’t fulfill requests.”
The lawsuit seeks $2,500 per violation, which may not seem like a lot but could be a huge fine for the millions of people who tried to buy Swift’s tour tickets. Jennifer Kinder, one of the attorneys representing the fans, said The edge that although the case has yet to be accepted by the court at the time of writing, it is expected to be on Monday. The edge contacted Ticketmaster with a request for comment but did not immediately respond.
Ticketmaster caused a stir when its site crashed amid “historically unprecedented demand” for tickets during the presale for Swift’s upcoming tour. This whole ordeal forced Ticketmaster to delay some of its pre-sales until it finally sold tickets before it could even hold a public sale. At the time, Swift expressed her frustration with the situation on Instagram, saying it “really pisses me off” that fans feel like they “have suffered multiple bear attacks” just to get tickets to one of his shows.