Ticketmaster Taylor Swift debacle explained in wake of explosive Congressional hearing

American company Ticketmaster's parent organization, Live Nation Entertainment, was slammed by lawmakers for their inability to provide tickets for Taylor Swift's upcoming tour.

On Tuesday, January 24, the president and the Chief Financial Officer of Live Nation Entertainment, Joe Berchtold, appeared before a Senate committee over the company's incompetence that left several Swift fans unable to buy tickets or get them even after paying for them.

In her opening remarks, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, slammed the company stating:

"This is all the definition of monopoly. Live Nation is so powerful that it doesn't even need to exert pressure, it doesn't need to threaten, because people just fall in line."

She further pointed out the importance of competition to run a capitalistic system while referencing Swift's song All too Well.

“To have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition. You can’t have too much consolidation — something that, unfortunately for this country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say, we know ‘all too well.’”

The Ticketmaster-Taylor Swift fiasco began in mid-November 2022 after the Blank Space singer's tickets for her upcoming five-month Eras Tour went on sale. The ticketing system became bogged down due to the high volume of demand, which infuriated Swifties, who could not purchase tickets.

Customers said that they were unable to access tickets on the Ticketmaster site, even though they had a pre-sale code that allowed verified fans to purchase tickets early. These customers reported that Ticketmaster was not loading properly. The company ultimately canceled concert ticket sales due to high demand.

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Ticketmaster apologized to Taylor Swift fans for the inconvenience

Two months after the incident with Taylor Swift's tour tickets, Joe Berchtold appeared before a Senate committee on January 24 and said:

“As we said after the onsale, and I reiterate today: We apologize to the fans. We apologize to Ms. Swift. We need to do better and we will do better.”

In his company's defense, he said that the ticket site was “hit with three times the amount of bot traffic than we had ever experienced” amid the demand for Swift's tour tickets.

"[This] required us to slow down and even pause our sales. This is what led to a terrible consumer experience that we deeply regret.”

During the hearing, Ticketmaster's dominance in the entertainment industry was pointed out by its rivals. CEO of SeatGeek, Jack Groetzinger, stated that Live Nation "controls the most popular entertainers in the world."

“This power over the entire live entertainment industry allows Live Nation to maintain its monopolistic influence over the primary ticketing market. As long as Live Nation remains both the dominant concert promoter and ticketer of major venues in the US, the industry will continue to lack competition and struggle."

Calling it a "very traditional monopoly," the vice president for legal advocacy at the American Antitrust Institute, Kathleen Bradish, pointed out that since there is a lack of competition, customers suffer and pay higher prices too.

“Customers pay the price for these monopolistic acts with higher ticket prices and fees, lower quality, less choice and less innovation.”

After the tickets fiasco took place in November, Taylor Swift herself weighed in on the matter, stating she is "extremely protective" of her fans. She added that it was "excruciating" for her to watch these mistakes.