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WASHINGTON, Nov 18 (Reuters) – Congress plans to hold a hearing on Ticketmaster, due to issues with Taylor Swift ticket sales this week and longstanding issues such as hidden fees, a key senator said on Friday.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Antitrust Committee, did not give a date for the hearing, but said it would be this year.
Ticketmaster has come under fire for mishandling ticket sales for Swift’s 2023 tour, her first in five years. During Tuesday’s “presale” round, many fans faced site outages and long wait times as more than 2 million tickets were sold.
Klobuchar told MSNBC on Friday that the issue was bigger than Swift’s ticket sales issues this week. “It’s about prices, hidden fees that are way too high. It’s about site disruption,” she said.
Ticketmaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the expected audience. He previously said the issues with Swift ticket sales were caused by unprecedented demand, largely by bots trying to buy tickets to resell them. (Report by Diane Bartz edited by Nick Zieminski)
