No Taylor? No peace!
A group of Taylor Swift fans are suing Ticketmaster over their botched November 15 ticket sale for their Eras Tour.
The fan collective is suing the company for “fraud, price fixing and antitrust violations”, accusing it of “intentional deception” which allowed resellers to buy most of the tickets.
Ticketmaster controls the primary ticket sales market and also has a stake in the secondary market. The lawsuit alleges they were “eager to allow” scalpers to participate in the pre-sale event in order to collect additional fees on resold tickets.
The lawsuit argues that even if there was no intentional collusion, the company was unprepared for the box office assault, an accusation that Swift herself made.
Named in the lawsuit is LA County, the location of Ticketmaster Live Nation’s parent company. The lawsuit asks the court to slap the company with a civil penalty of $2,500 per violation, which would be a substantial amount for a stadium show.
Ticketmaster apologized to Swift and fans after the presale, blaming a landslide and bot attacks for creating massive demand. This activity blocked many fans who had registered and received special codes to purchase tickets. Additionally, the public ticket sale has been canceled due to the limited number of remaining tickets.
Swift said she was “assured” that Ticketmaster could handle the expected high demand for tickets. She lamented that “It really pisses me off that a lot of (fans) feel like they took multiple bear attacks to get them.”
Ticketmaster claimed that more than 3.5 million people registered for the presale, the largest registration in history.
Read the full legal document here.