‘Pisses Me Off’: Taylor Swift Slams Ticketmaster for Sales Bungle as Reports Swirl of DOJ Probe
© AP Photo / Evan Agostini
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Singer Taylor Swift dug into ticket-selling giant Ticketmaster on Friday after the company bailed on selling tickets to her forthcoming music tour. Meanwhile, rumors are swirling that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened a new probe of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment.
On Thursday, Ticketmaster suddenly announced that because of “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand,” sales for concerts on Swift’s “The Eras” tour would be canceled. The company did not say when they might be rescheduled for.
The decision came after a mixture of unexpectedly large numbers of fans and bot attacks combined to overload the ticket pre-sale event earlier that week, which was intended to be restricted to “Verified Fans” with a special code.
Swift responded to Ticketmaster’s decision with grace in a Friday statement posted to her Instagram* account.
🚨| @taylorswift13 on “The Eras Tour” via IG stories pic.twitter.com/ZVoN9NJg8T
— The Swift Society (@TheSwiftSociety) November 18, 2022
“Well it goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” the singer said. “We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. 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.”
“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” Swift said. “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.”
Also on Friday, US media reported that the DOJ’s antitrust bureau had opened a new investigation of Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s parent company, for suspected monopoly practices.
When the two companies merged in 2010, it prompted fears of monopolization of the industry, but even though the US Senate’s Judiciary consumer rights subcommittee was informed that Ticketmaster commanded 80% of the ticket sales market prior to the merger, it was allowed to go forward with nothing more than promises from Live Nation not to abuse its position.
Accusations of monopoly practices against Ticketmaster predated the merger and only increased after it.
Those calls were renewed earlier this week amid the debacle over Swift’s ticket sales, with several US lawmakers urging a new probe. US Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who chairs the above subcommittee, wrote directly to Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, demanding information about its ticket distribution processes and the quality of its computer systems.
*Meta, Facebook, and Instagram are banned in Russia over extremist activities
