Posted by By Julia Demskie, Assistant Editor-in-Chief
Did you get tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour?
Taylor Swift is one of the most famous artists of our generation. It’s no surprise that tickets to her first tour since 2018 were the most coveted of the year. Millions of fans flooded the website of Ticketmaster, a company that dominates the live entertainment market, hoping to register for the Verified Fan program that the platform offers.
The Verified Fan program was created in 2017 by Ticketmaster in an effort to limit the amount of scalper bots purchasing tickets for high demand events in large volumes that would end up on resale sites for a much higher cost. Fans who are looking to buy tickets for an event can register for a chance to be deemed a “Verified Fan” and be given a unique code. This code can then be used during the Verified Fan Presale for that specific event, and during this presale, each customer can purchase up to six tickets.
In a statement released on Ticketmaster’s website, the company’s site received 3.5 billion system requests during the presale event that took place on November 15.
If you went anywhere near social media during the two weeks after Swift announced her Eras Tour on November 1, 2022, you would know that the ticket sale was nothing short of a disaster.
Presale codes seemed few and far between; less than half of the people I know personally who had pre-registered were approved as a Verified Fan. Nationwide, according to Ticketmaster, about 1.5 million of the 3.5 million users who pre-registered were sent presale codes. The company operates on the assumption that about 40% of those who receive codes actually purchase tickets, and those 40% purchase an average of 3 tickets in each transaction.
But for this tour, which clearly proved itself to be in unprecedented demand, these estimates did not hold true. In a statement released on Ticketmaster’s website, the company’s site received 3.5 billion system requests during the presale event that took place on November 15. This led to many glitches and crashes of the website, as well as many frustrated fans.
By the end of the sale, 2.4 million tickets were purchased for the 52 show dates, shattering records for the most sales by the platform. But at what cost?
The response from fans was already one of disappointment and discouragement, and these feelings were magnified when Ticketmaster announced the cancellation of regular sales for the tour. The company had already released every available ticket during its presale, leaving fans who did not receive a code with an even slimmer chance at scoring tickets than before.
In a statement issued in the wake of the historic sale, Swift claimed that Ticketmaster’s representatives had been “asked, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand,” and that, each time, she and her team were “assured they could.”
The catastrophic presale event did more than just confirm Swift’s status as a global phenomenon; it opened a dialogue, everywhere from social media to Congress, about the nature of Ticketmaster’s position within the live entertainment industry.
It is evident that Ticketmaster has a monopoly over live entertainment, which includes everything from concerts to sporting events. It’s the only place to get firsthand tickets at face value. They could charge whatever amount of money they see fit in service charges and fees, and fans would still purchase tickets, because that is the only way that they are available. This non-competitive nature is the most defining feature of a monopoly.
Ticketmaster’s disproportionate influence and control of the industry is not something new. Pearl Jam brought Ticketmaster’s dominance to the attention of the Justice Department after a dispute over high service fee charges from the ticket giant, and an investigation was launched in May of 1994. This went nowhere, though, and the situation worsened in 2010, when Ticketmaster and their only viable competition, Live Nation Entertainment, merged into one massive company.
They could charge whatever amount of money they see fit in service charges and fees, and fans would still purchase tickets, because that is the only way that they are available. This non-competitive nature is the most defining feature of a monopoly.
Following the disastrous sale for the Eras Tour, frustrated fans of Swift took to social media to bring attention to the unfair business practices of the company. A group of fans even went so far as to file a class action lawsuit against the company, claiming a monopoly over primary and secondary markets, and multiple instances of antitrust violations. The 26 plaintiffs challenged Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster in December, hoping for justice for what they considered “misleading” advertisement.
In the wake of the ticket sale, some politicians even took to social media to call for investigations and government interference. New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined the conversation, stating that we must “break them up” in a tweet on November 15.
Will any of this talk actually lead anywhere? Well….maybe. Just last month the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Ticketmaster executives about the sale.
Will this effort suffer the same fate as Pearl Jam’s in the 90s, or will Swifties finally be able to end the company’s reign over live entertainment? It is impossible to be sure, but one thing is clear; fans should have access to fair and affordable tickets.
Instead of sucking all the possible profit out of an artist’s fan base, which in Swift’s case, is primarily teenage girls, ticket sellers should make it possible for everyday Americans to appreciate the art of their favorite acts. Instead of taking advantage of and capitalizing off of their prominence in the industry as much as possible, it is the responsibility of Ticketmaster to set a precedent for accessible live music.
The Maroon 