Swifties vs. Ticketmaster

by Anton Dedvukaj and Ben Hymowitz

One of the most recent and significant controversies of the modern music world includes superstar Taylor Swift and the ticketing giant, Ticketmaster. Late last week, Ticketmaster announced that there would not be a general sale for Swift’s Eras Tour. The announcement came on the heels of a disastrous pre-sale, plagued with bots and scalpers.

According to those familiar with the situation, Ticketmaster was allegedly expecting a maximum of about 2 million users to sign on and purchase tickets. In total, an estimated 14 million fans rushed the site in hopes of purchasing tickets, which caused Ticketmaster to crash and ticket resale prices to soar, with reports reaching as high as $95,000 a ticket.

To Swift’s credit, she did reportedly take steps to make the situation better than it could have been. She allegedly opted out of using dynamic pricing for the tour pre-sale – a practice that would have shot ticket prices up exponentially in real time based on high demand. Still, this didn’t stop prices from skyrocketing to the thousands.

Swift responded to the situation on her Instagram story. “It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse”, Swift wrote. “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. And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together… Thank you for wanting to be there.”

Ticketmaster also responded on their Twitter account, writing, “We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets.” They provided a link to a page on their website which broke down more alleged reasons why this debacle happened.

Of course, then comes the biggest news of all: the Department of Justice is now involved. There will be a hearing by the Senate’s antitrust committee based on this event to determine whether or not Ticketmaster and Live Nation now have a monopoly over the ticket-selling business, which allowed for the prices to surge to such ludicrous amounts.

The sad reality about this whole situation is that Ticketmaster has an almost unopposed monopoly in event ticketing. The reason why is because of a major stakeholder, Live Nation. Live Nation owns or has a stake in the majority of concert and entertainment venues around the world. Until Live Nation falls, which it likely never will, Ticketmaster will continue to rule the ticketing world.

Another side of the Taylor Swift ticketing issue is bots. To those unfamiliar, bots can automatically select and purchase tickets in seconds, with the click of a button. Ticketmaster has tried to combat this with adding more bot protection, but as we’ve seen with brands like clothing giant Supreme, as companies up their protection, developers will keep evolving and putting out new and improved bot software. 

Regardless, this issue remains ongoing, with a group of Taylor Swift fans recently suing Ticketmaster themselves, and intend to take the lawsuit to trial. What actions are taken against Ticketmaster, Live Nation, and all other involved parties in the future will remain to be seen.