JACKSONVILLE, Florida. – The problems Taylor Swift fans have had getting tickets for her recently announced The Era tour shines a new light on Ticketmaster.
The company is now under federal investigation. US Senator Amy Klobuchar, who chairs a committee focused on consumer protection, has announced she wants the Justice Department to investigate Ticketmaster after it canceled the sale of concert tickets to the general public for Swift’s upcoming tour. .
Klobuchar wrote to Ticketmaster’s CEO in an open letter, saying, “I write to express serious concerns about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its detrimental impact on consumers. Reports of system failures, increased fees, and complaints of conduct that violate the consent decree under which Ticketmaster is subject suggest that Ticketmaster continues to abuse its market positions.
U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Ticketmaster, which merged with Live Nation, is a monopoly she says needs to be brought under control.
TELL US: What kind of experience have you had with Ticketmaster, and what do you think should change?
Around 3.5 million Swift fans had already signed up for the opportunity to purchase tickets – the biggest registrar in pop music history. But Ticketmaster said it received more than 3.5 billion system requests to buy tickets on Tuesday. All that internet traffic slowed down Ticketmaster’s verified fan system, designed to weed out bots, and then shut down. Lawmakers are demanding answers as fans report that Ticketmaster is charging exorbitant fees to pay for a faulty system.
“Millions and millions of people logged on to Ticketmaster because they were the only ones selling tickets. So it was completely overloading their system,” said Kelly Roy, who got tickets.
Row considers herself one of the lucky ones, getting 11-row floor seats from Swift for one of her concerts in Atlanta. Millions of other fans, however, are left empty-handed, after Ticketmaster canceled Friday’s general ticket sale due to high demand.
“They keep saying they don’t know why or how it happened. But they gave the presale codes. They know exactly how many pre-sale codes they gave away, so they should have known how much traffic was coming to the site and prepared for it,” Roy said. “But what happened was absolutely insane.”
Row said they paid almost 20% of the ticket price in fees to Ticketmaster, while some customers say they pay up to 37% of their ticket price in fees.
ticket master posted on social media earlier this week, stating, “Due to the extraordinarily high demands on the ticketing systems and the remaining insufficient ticket inventory to meet this demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras tour has been cancelled.
Due to extraordinarily high demands on the ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet this demand, tomorrow’s public onsale for Taylor Swift | The Eras tour has been cancelled.
—Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) November 17, 2022
Some fans said Ticketmaster took their money and didn’t deliver.
“Ticketmaster takes the $490 out of my account, but it crashed,” one TikTok user said.
News4JAX viewers also talk about their experience with Ticketmaster
“I signed up for a presale using 6 different emails and accounts to try to be selected from 1 of them and was waitlisted for all of them. Of fish!” Jesse wrote.
Julia wrote: “I waited in line for hours to access tickets, made it to the front row and then was kicked out of the ticket buying process.”
Roy said more needs to be done to make the ticketing process more efficient and fair across the board.
“I just think whatever it takes to not repeat what happened on Tuesday and Wednesday is really important. I think letting other people or other companies sell tickets would alleviate a lot of the issues,” Roy said.
Complaints about Ticketmaster’s monopoly power date back to 1994 when rock band Pearl Jam filed a lawsuit with the Justice Department’s antitrust division. This complaint was dismissed. This latest complaint is about whether Live Nation, which merged with Ticketmaster, is abusing its power over the multi-billion dollar live music industry.
As for Swift fans, if they want to attend the concerts, they are now forced to purchase tickets through resellers charging thousands of dollars for a single ticket.
On Friday, Swift posted an Instagram story addressing the fiasco surrounding ticket sales for her upcoming tour and Ticketmaster.
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