Taylor Swift Ticketmaster Senate Investagation Launched Amid Ticket Fiasco

Taylor Swift's "The Eras" Tour has been riddled with controversy as its chosen ticketing agent and event producer, Ticketmaster and Live Nation, is faced with insurmountable heat from Swifties and, most recently, from the United States government.

During the ticket presale of "The Eras" tour earlier this month, Swifties had queued virtually for more than 8 hours only to leave emptyhanded and to fume for the botched processes.

Swifties, who had voiced their sentiments on social media, had been highly reported in the media. Recently, it got the backing of people from congress, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Min).

According to Billboard, Klobuchar, along with her counterpart from the other side of the aisle, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), has pooled in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights to investigate the monopoly of Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger.

"Last week, the competition problem in ticketing markets was made painfully obvious when Ticketmaster's website failed hundreds of thousands of fans hoping to purchase concert tickets." Klobuchar said in a statement. "The high fees, site disruptions and cancellations that customers experienced shows how Ticketmaster's dominant market position means the company does not face any pressure to continually innovate and improve."

As for Lee, he believes that consumers "deserve the benefit of competition in every market, from grocery chains to concert venues."

"I look forward to exercising our Subcommittee's oversight authority to ensure that anticompetitive mergers and exclusionary conduct are not crippling an entertainment industry already struggling to recover from pandemic lockdowns," he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei said in an interview last week that the capacity for the peak demand that they have set in anticipation for the presale.

"Based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing). that's a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years," Ticketmaster said.

Meanwhile, Swifties across various industries have joined forces in creating "Vigilante Legal," a coalition used to petition attorney generals from various states to spearhead various probes to Ticketmaster and Live Nation.

Tags

Taylor Swift, Ticketmaster