Taylor Swift announced a highly anticipated “Eras Tour” that starts in March 2023. The tickets went on sale on Nov. 18, and because of high demand and traffic, Ticketmaster crashed. With the issues millions of fans faced while trying to buy tickets, the public started questioning Ticketmaster and its monopoly over the live music industry.
When concert tickets go on sale, most artists sell through Ticketmaster. This is because large venues often have contracts with Ticketmaster, forcing artists to sell their tickets through them. When large artists such as Taylor Swift go on tour needing stadiums to hold millions of their fans, working with Ticketmaster is unnegotiable and unavoidable.
Because of the outrage surrounding Swift’s “Eras Tour”, Ticketmaster and LiveNation has received backlash as people called them out.
“Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with LiveNation should have never been approved,” US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. “[T]hey need to be reigned in. Break them up.”
LiveNation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, when this was done it had to be approved by the Department of Justice. Now with more controversy surrounding Ticketmaster, they are being investigated by the Department of Justice once again to determine whether or not to file an antitrust lawsuit.
On top of the Department of Justice investigation, the US Congress is holding an antitrust hearing on Ticketmaster. The antitrust panel enforces the Antitrust Act, which restricts contracts that will limit interstate and foreign trade.
“The competition problem in ticketing markets was made painfully obvious when Ticketmaster’s website failed hundreds of thousands of fans,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, the chair of the Senate antitrust panel, said.
The purpose of the Congress hearing is to see how the merging of LiveNation and Ticketmaster has negatively impacted the live music industry, consumers, and artists. At the moment, there is not a set date for the hearing.
As for the fans, many were in outrage as they experienced the website crashing, several hour long waits, or not getting the opportunity to get tickets. Ticketmaster was only supposed to allow 1.5 million fans get presale codes, but 14 million were selected.
Ticketmaster’s unpreparedness for the high demand of tickets shows that there should be other avenues to purchase concert tickets.