Taylor Swift fans spent hours on Ticketmaster on Tuesday, leaving the experience depleted, exhausted and for many of them — still ticketless.
Swifties rejoiced when Swift announced “The Eras Tour,” which would feature music from all eras and albums of her music, and included 52 concert dates. It’s the first time she will go on tour in four years.
Getting tickets was not necessarily a joyful day for many of those fans. Many reported experiencing long waits, a glitchy website, getting seats in their cart only to get kicked out before the purchase finalized and to come back to find the tickets were much more expensive or not there at all.
What does Taylor Swift say about the situation with Ticketmaster?
Ticketmaster reported, per CNBC, that 14 million people flooded the site on Tuesday in search of tickets, and a record 2.4 million secured tickets.
Swift spoke on the matter on Friday, releasing a statement on her Instagram stories, saying:
“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. 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.”
Will Ticketmaster be investigated or receive repercussions?
The debacle prompted even politicians to weigh in.
Rep. Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted on Tuesday: “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in. Break them up.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also tweeted about the fiasco, saying: “Taylor Swift’s tour sale is a perfect example of how the LiveNation/Ticketmaster merger harms consumers by creating a near-monopoly. I’ve long urged DOJ to investigate the state of competition in the ticketing industry. Consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior.”
Tennessee’s attorney general announced an investigation into Ticketmaster over whether it “violated consumers’ rights and antitrust regulations,” The Washington Post reported.
“We are concerned about this very dominant market player, and we want to make sure that they’re treating consumers right and that people are receiving a fair opportunity to purchase the tickets that clearly matter a great deal to them,” Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said during a press conference, per The Washington Post.
The CEO of Liberty Media, Greg Maffei, said on CNBC that the demand “exceeded every expectation,” and blamed some of the issues on the fact that Swift hasn’t toured since 2018.
Why LiveNation is being investigated by the Department of Justice
The New York Times reported that the Department of Justice is already investigating LiveNation, the parent company to Ticketmaster, looking into if the company violated antitrust laws.
What happened?: The Justice Department approved the merger in 2010, with the stipulation that the company sell certain parts of the business. Music artists and other industry experts vehemently opposed the merger at the time.
Did longtime Taylor Swift fans get tickets on Ticketmaster?
Longtime Swifties were especially frustrated on Tuesday because Ticketmaster claimed it would give fans “preferred access” who had tickets to “Loverfest,” the tour she had planned for 2020, but canceled, due to the pandemic.
Ticketmaster made the claim on a now deleted blog post, but one Reddit user captured a screenshot before it was taken down.
Earlier this month, some fans who had purchased “Midnights” merchandise also received an email from Taylor Nation saying, “As a thank you for your contribution to a historic week, we’d like to boost your place in line for the Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour TaylorSwiftTix Presale powered by Verified Fan.”
However, longtime fans who had both “preferred access” and the “boost” were dismayed to learn that it seemingly did nothing to get them into the queue faster than fans who didn’t have those boosts.
The first sale was only for Verified Fans on Ticketmaster, but because of the high demand, Ticketmaster cancelled the general sale, which was supposed to take place Friday.