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The Taylor Swift debacle - On October 21, 2022, Taylor Swift dropped her album ‘Midnights’ to major critical and commercial success. The Swifties are one of the largest and strongest fanbases around the world, and they were whipped up into a frenzy when Swift announced her world tour a week later.

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The Eras World Tour -

The 2023 Eras Tour would mark Swift’s first concert tour since 2018, in which time she’s released four albums. It was obvious that it would be huge and that millions upon millions of fans would be desperate to snatch up the precious tickets.

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Enter Ticketmaster -

Swift’s promoter, AEG, say they were forced to partner with Ticketmaster to sell tickets for the tour because of the exclusive deals they have with so many venues on the standard US tour route for an act like Taylor Swift.

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A little context -

Ticketmaster and Live Nation were formerly two separate entertainment companies that specialized in the sale of tickets for concerts and other events. They were market competitors, and when they merged in 2010 they became unbeatable.

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A concerning amount of control -

The merger has been controversial for more than a decade, as it gave the newly formed entertainment empire an estimated 70% control over the event ticketing market in the US.

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Lack of competition -

They have long been accused of anti-competitive practices, meaning that they abuse their dominant market position to the detriment of the consumers. Simply put, Ticketmaster is free to hike up their prices because customers have nowhere else to buy tickets.

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Criticized but unchanged -

Ticketmaster and Live Nations' monopoly over the ticketing market has been criticized, but that’s not all. They have been accused of intentional deception, price fixing, fraud, and violation of antitrust laws. Regardless, most of the biggest artists in the world still use Ticketmaster because, really, what other choice do they have?

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Back to Taylor’s Ticketgate -

Ticketmaster organized a presale for Swifties beginning on November 15 through their Verified Fan program, where customers can register in the hopes of being randomly selected to receive a code allowing them to access the presale and buy a limited number of tickets.

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The Verified Fan system -

This system was intended to prevent scalpers from using bots to buy up large numbers of tickets to resell at a profit. Unfortunately for Swift fans, the system failed.

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Ticketmaster fails to handle the demand -

Ticketmaster claimed that 14 million customers tried to access the site to buy Taylor Swift tickets, despite the fact that they’d only provided approximately 1.5 million presale codes. This caused the site to crash, despite the fact that Ticketmaster promised Swift that they could handle the demand, and the situation was incredibly poorly handled.

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Disastrous customer experience -

Fans who should have been able to buy tickets were instead logged out or stuck in a frozen ticketing queue for hours. Others managed to complete their purchases but later discovered that they wouldn’t be getting a ticket.

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General sale canceled -

Despite the major technical malfunctions, 2.4 million tickets were sold that day. This broke the record for the highest number of concert tickets sold in a single day. Ticketmaster announced that they were canceling the general sale of tickets scheduled for the following days due to a lack of inventory.

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Devastated fans -

This meant that the true fans who got cut out of the presale due to the website crash had no chance of getting a ticket (unless they were willing to pay a small fortune to the scalpers who still managed to swipe up huge batches of tickets).

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Swift's response - The outrage was immense, and the backlash was swift (no pun intended). Swift herself was quick to speak out against Ticketmaster, their false promises, and their poor handling of the situation.

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An open letter to Ticketmaster -

Senator Amy Klobuchar penned an open letter to Ticketmaster’s CEO on the subject back in November. “Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services,” she wrote. “That can result in the types of dramatic service failures we saw this week, where consumers are the ones that pay the price.”

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Ticketmaster appeared before the US Senate Judiciary Committee -

The result of this disaster was that the US Senate Judiciary Committee organized a hearing to review the incident, as well as Ticketmaster’s potentially unlawful lack of competition in the market. They titled the hearing "That’s The Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment."

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Calls to reverse the merger -

Many lawmakers are calling for the Justice Department to order the reversal of the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger that gave them such a significant hold over the market.

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Class action lawsuits -

A group of 26 fans banded together to file a class-action lawsuit against Ticketmaster in December 2022, accusing them of engaging in fraud, price fixing, anticompetitive behavior, and intentional misrepresentation. Later in December, a second class-action suit was brought against them, citing anticompetitive practices and violation of antitrust laws.

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Bruce Springsteen and dynamic pricing - Another practice of Ticketmaster that has been heavily criticized recently is their “dynamic pricing.” This system means that the price of tickets automatically fluctuates based on demand. This caused outrage in 2022 when tickets for Bruce Springsteen’s tour went on sale.

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Fans feel excluded and exploited - Being the music legend that he is, Springsteen tickets can often cost US$250 or more. However, the dynamic pricing system saw a $400 ticket suddenly shoot to $5,000 due to website traffic. Springsteen claimed to have nothing to do with ticket pricing and many of his fans felt betrayed by being priced out and not seeing any accountability from Ticketmaster or Springsteen.

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Beyoncé's Renaissance World Tour - When Beyoncé announced her Renaissance World Tour in February 2023, the first since her Formation World Tour in 2016, fans knew that getting a ticket was going to be like ‘The Hunger Games.’

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The same failures -

Of course, the tickets went on sale with Ticketmaster, and the Verified Fan and dynamic pricing systems were used again. Many fans were devastated not to receive presale codes, and those who did saw ticket prices doubling and tripling before their eyes. Again, Ticketmaster claimed that the demand for tickets far exceeded their expectations, leading to a frustrating and stressful experience for customers.

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Bad Bunny's Mexico City disaster -

Ticketmaster also made a royal mess of the ticket sales for Bad Bunny’s tour. As the Los Angeles Times put it, “Bad Bunny’s World’s Hottest Tour became the world’s hottest mess Friday after instances of ticket fraud prevented hundreds of fans from attending the musician’s concert in Mexico City.”

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Hundreds of ticket holders turned away -

The Mexico City concert on December 9 was the final stop on the Puerto Rican rapper’s wildly successful world tour. Hundreds of fans were unceremoniously refused entry at the gate as security told them that their tickets were invalid. While Ticketmaster put the issue down to an "unprecedented number of fake tickets" being sold, they are suspected of overselling the event in a major ticketing error.

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Ticketmaster sued by Mexican government -

Despite the number of fans that were turned away, there were still overcrowding issues at the sold-out venue capable of holding 85,000. The Mexican government responded by suing Ticketmaster Mexico and asking Bad Bunny to play a free concert for the disappointed fans.

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Drake's It's All A Blur tour -

Drake fans felt like they were expected to take out a second mortgage to get a ticket for his 2023 It’s All A Blur tour. Twitter blew up with complaints as even the earliest available tickets started soaring to prices of US$1,000 or more.

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Dynamic pricing strikes again -

Ticketmaster reportedly advertised ticket prices starting at US$69, but prices instantly shot up according to many fans who tried to purchase when sales opened.

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The Cure - Classic rock band The Cure announced their 2023 US tour with the promise that they’d make their ticket prices fair and affordable. "We want the tour to be affordable for all fans, and we have a very wide (and we think very fair) range of pricing at every show," they said in a statement.

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Ticketmaster fees cause outrage -

When ticket sales began on Ticketmaster, there were indeed affordable tickets for shows across the US. However, the multiple service fees added by Ticketmaster were sometimes higher than the ticket prices. Some customers reportedly bought two US$20 tickets, but ended up paying more than $70 at checkout due to fees.

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Robert Smith speaks out - “I am as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘Fees’ debacle,” front man Robert Smith wrote on Twitter. “To be very clear: The artist has no way to limit them. I have been asking how they are justified. If I get anything coherent by way of an answer I will let you all know.”

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Ticketmaster's response -

Ticketmaster eventually responded to Smith and agreed that the fees were "unduly high." A week later, they started providing partial refunds of US$5-10 to ticketholders. The automated message from Ticketmaster to customers read, "This is all thanks to Robert Smith."

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Pearl Jam set the trend -

While many artists are now speaking out against Ticketmaster and the price gouging in the ticketing industry in general, Pearl Jam has them beaten by two decades! The grunge band declared war on Ticketmaster back in 1993, raising their concerns about the company’s practices to the Justice Department.

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They didn't get far -

They accused Ticketmaster of strong-arming venues into refusing the band after they decided not to sell their tickets through Ticketmaster due to the high fees for fans. They even had the support of Democrats in promoting the Pearl Jam bill, which would enforce ticket brokers to clearly print service charges on tickets. Unfortunately, the Justice Department decided they didn’t have a strong case against Ticketmaster, and the bill died.

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HYBE follows suit -

In South Korea, the Hybe Corporation has reportedly taken on Ticketmaster's dreaded dynamic pricing system, wherein many people in the US have ended up paying much more than they intended because their ticket price changed without notice before checking out. #NoDynamicPricing became one of the world's top trending hashtags as BTS fans decried Hybe's exploitation of the Army fanbase, many of whom can no longer afford to see the beloved K-pop band despite members of the band having previously expressed that they could even perform concerts for free for their fans. 

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The future of event ticketing -

With so many highly-publicized ticket scandals in such a short period of time, many are hopeful that change is coming. Ticketmaster and Live Nation may be forced to split, while laws banning exclusive ticketing contracts and limiting service fees could be introduced. Ticketmaster's former CEO, Fred Rosen, isn't so sure. “I have no sympathy for people whining about high ticket prices,” he told the Los Angeles Times. "None of this can be regulated because you can’t regulate emotions about a star."

See also: Dream concert tours that never were

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