Trouble With Ticketmaster

Amelia Staresinic, 12th grade

Ticketmaster’s latest controversy has come after the site completely crashed during Taylor Swift’s pre-sale for the Era’s Tour, but this is not the company’s first altercation with the public. Since 2010, when they merged with Live Nation, Ticketmaster has held a monopoly on ticket sales. This allowed them to raise prices and add fees, harming consumers. During Swift’s Verified Fan pre-sale, 1.5 million people were invited to get tickets and we met with dynamic pricing, added costs, and for some, simply no tickets. The site crashed during the sale and left many without tickets. Fans are blaming this on a corrupt system, and the United States Justice Department is currently investigating the issue, but this investigation is said to pre-date the Taylor Swift debacle.

According to David McCabe and Ben Sisario of the New York Times, “The investigation is focused on whether Live Nation Entertainment has abused its power over the multibillion-dollar live music industry.” The Biden administration has been fighting over the past two years to expand antitrust law and stop companies from gaining a monopoly over their industry. The Justice Department approved the merge between Live Nation and Ticketmaster to become Live Nation Entertainment in 2010, with some provisions that the company must not threaten concert venues with loss of tours if they use other platforms for ticket sales, but in a 2019 investigation, it was discovered that Live Nation had repeatedly violated these stipulations.

In 1994, Pearl Jam was on tour. In an attempt to disband their large prices, the band stated to Ticketmaster that they wanted their tickets to be no more than $30 with fees a max of $3. Knowing the monopoly that Ticket Master is, this did not bode well for the band. The company and the band went back and forth for a while. Unfortunately, no deal was struck so Pearl Jam decided to launch a tour without their services. While looking at venues they realized Ticket Master had nearly blacklisted the band. They ended up losing 9 million dollars from this tour. The band took it to the DOJ to have the company investigated claiming they operated as a monopoly. They attempted to tour again after the case was slowly fizzled out but found it to be impossible. In this day and age, it is impossible as serious artists to launch a large tour using large venues without using Ticketmaster.

The topic of this situation has obviously arisen again recently with the enraged Swifties (Taylor Swift Fans). Thousands of fans of Swift were unable to get tickets. This was an outrage and realization of how poorly the thing was run. Congressmen were outraged and the department of justice has recently demanded an investigation into the monopoly that is Ticket Master. While it is unfortunate that so many fans did not get tickets, and the tickets fell into the hands of resellers, not much can be done. Swift herself even spoke up about her frustration via an Instagram Story, without mentioning Ticketmaster, which is very telling of how much power Ticket Master holds.