A prominent lawmaker has renewed calls to reign in Ticketmaster.
Anytime Taylor Swift does anything, chaos quickly follows.
Because of the pandemic, Swift hasn’t had a proper tour since 2018. Since then, she’s released a whopping four albums of new material, including her recent “Midnights,” and also issued re-recorded and expanded versions of her albums “Fearless” and “Red.” So that’s a lot of material that hasn’t gotten a live rendition, as well as a lot of pent-up fan demand.
Swift recently announced that next year she will be touring America’s finest stadiums as part of her Eras tour, and she will be bringing along stellar openers including Paramore, Muna and Phoebe Bridgers. Fans proceeded to lose their minds.
Some fans complained that Swift had ruined their wedding by playing on the same day they were going to walk down the aisle. Reports arose of hotels canceling the reservations of people who had booked a block of rooms for their wedding guests, as the hotels apparently thought they could charge much more to people who would travel to catch a Swift show.
But now that tickets have officially gone on sale, more chaos has ensued, and Live Nation (LYV) – Get Free Report and Ticketmaster are once getting a social media shellacking.
Taylor Swift Fans Are Not Happy With Ticketmaster
Tickets to Swift’s 52-date Eras tour went on sale recently, but fans were in for a rude surprise when they visited Ticketmaster.
Pre-sale tickets were supposed to only be for verified Swift fans, as part of a program Ticketmaster has instituted to fend off scalpers and bots.
But those fans were met with long wait times in the Ticketmaster queue, and the website reportedly crashed several times. The company said in a statement that “historically unprecedented demand” resulted in “intermittent issues” that the company was “urgently” working to fix.
While the verified fans system was supposed to deter scalpers, it doesn’t seem to have worked, as tickets immediately showed up on the ticket resale website StubHub, which is owned by eBay, and were going for up to $21,600 for a floor seat at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., and many other dates showed tickets going for five figures. But bargains are available, if you want to be generous, as nosebleed seats for the show are available for $350.
Tickets for the tour, which kicks off on March 17 at Glendale, Ariz., started at $49 for general admission with VIP packages starting at $199.
Fans who bought tickets for heavily hyped shows such as BTS, Blink-182’s reunion tour and next year’s tour with Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band were confronted with, and outraged by, Ticketmaster’s new “dynamic pricing model,” in which prices for what are called Platinum Tickets fluctuate based on demand, akin to surge pricing for Uber.
This model was rolled out for recent tours for Paul McCartney, Bad Bunny and Harry Styles, and as more fans encounter this model, the more they dislike it. But at least at the moment, dynamic pricing doesn’t seem to be the cause of the ticket price sticker shock.
A representative for StubHub noted to CNN that because this was the pre-sale, demand should go back down once the proper sale begins, and also stated that some tickets were available for $150, with the average ticket price going for around mid $600.
Ticketmaster/TheStreet
Twitter Has A Lot of Thoughts About This
People have been complaining about Ticketmaster’s service fees since the company started in 1976. In 1994, the alternative rock group Pearl Jam, at the height of their popularity, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Pearl Jam claimed the company had cut them out of venue bookings in a dispute over fees; this led to an investigation into what the Los Angeles Times referred to as “possible anti-competitive practices,” though ultimately no real action was taken against the company. The band boycotted Ticketmaster for a while, but eventually relented, as the company is practically the only game in town for major acts.
While some small venues either sell their own tickets directly or use smaller services such as Eventbrite, Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment (the two merged in 2009) have exclusive partnerships with most of America’s large music halls.
But this dominance and lack of other options, as well as the increasing costs of tickets for major tours, is leading to an ongoing public relations problem for the company, as nearly every major tour announcement inevitably leads to a Twitter backlash against the company.
Since Taylor Swift fans, or Swifites as they’re known, are some of the most dedicated people in all of pop music, the outcry against Ticketmaster has been particularly vocal, with younger fans complaining about long wait times, older music fans saying that we should have listened to Eddie Vedder and company, and several lawmakers calling for Ticketmaster and LiveNation to be investigated, or perhaps broken up.
Well, of course AOC was going to weigh in on this.
Remember, making fun of Swift fans is just mean.
Is anger against Ticketmaster going to become a campaign issue? Because more lawmakers are calling for the company to be investigated for anti-competitive behavior.
Of course The Daily Show has jokes.
Another lawmaker, Representative Bill Pascrell, Jr, Democrat of New Jersey, has also weighed in.
As has Representative David N. Cicilline, of Rhode Island, who is calling for an investigation into the company.
Maybe this all could have been avoided if we just listened to Pearl Jam.
