Ticketmaster Cancels Friday Sale of Taylor Swift Tour Tickets as It Faces New Monopoly Accusations
© AP Photo / Evan Agostini
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After its website crashed earlier this week amid a rush to buy tickets to Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour, Ticketmaster announced that its plans to put the tickets on sale for the general public on Friday would be canceled.
“Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been canceled,” the booking service tweeted on Thursday.
Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.
— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) November 17, 2022
The tour is scheduled to kickoff on March 17, 2023, in Glendale, Arizona, in support of all of her albums, including “Midnights,” which shattered streaming records when it dropped last month. Swift hasn’t been on tour since 2018, with her scheduled 2020 tour canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ticketmaster’s move came after its website crashed on Tuesday under the weight of unexpected traffic when it put presale tickets up to be bought. According to a statement put out by the company, heuristics used to judge likely buyer volume were thrown horribly off when many more “Verified Fans” showed up in the virtual line to buy tickets, and a large number of bot attacks combined to create the equivalent of 3.5 billion fans on the site.
In reality, just 2 million tickets were sold for the tour, but many experienced extremely long delays, and the website eventually shut down.
Ticketmaster has been under scrutiny for its practices since 1994, when grunge band Pearl Jam accused the company of monopoly practices in a lawsuit suggested by the US Department of Justice. While the suit failed, the fears never subsided. When Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010 to form Live Nation Entertainment, the DOJ was again watching, but declined to block the deal, even though a filing at the time stated that Ticketmaster’s share among major concert venues already exceeded 80%.
Since then, it has drawn more calls for the monopoly to be broken up, particularly over exorbitant fees tacked on to its sales - the same factor that provoked Pearl Jam’s suit.
US Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, urged the DOJ to investigate Live Nation’s anti-competitive practices. On Wednesday, she wrote to Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, saying that “Reports about system failures, increasing fees, and complaints of conduct that violate the consent decree Ticketmaster is under suggest that Ticketmaster continues to abuse its market positions.”
“When Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010, it was subject to an antitrust consent decree that prohibited it from abusing its market position,” she wrote. “Nonetheless, there have been numerous complaints about your company’s compliance with that decree. I am concerned about a pattern of non-compliance with your legal obligations.”
Klobuchar then asked for data on several items from the company, including details about its ticket distribution practices and the quality of its computer systems, to be delivered to her by November 23.
Klobuchar’s counterpart in the House, Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), also took a swing at Ticketmaster, tweeting that “Ticketmaster’s excessive wait times and fees are completely unacceptable” and “are a symptom of a larger problem. It’s no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly.”
.@Ticketmaster's excessive wait times and fees are completely unacceptable, as seen with today's @taylorswift13 tickets, and are a symptom of a larger problem.
— Congressman David N. Cicilline (@RepCicilline) November 15, 2022
It’s no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly.
Last year, he and several other House lawmakers urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to open a new probe into Live Nation.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) also called Ticketmaster a “monopoly,” saying its merger “should never have been approved, and they need to be reined in.”
