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Anyone who's ever bought a concert ticket at Ticketmaster can attest to the fact that it's never been a favorite among fans. Preposterous prices, slimy junk fees, and terrible customer service are just a few of the things it has to offer. In spite of how unpopular it is, it has continued to be the top box office seller. It is facing its worst PR nightmare in a long time. What's the reason? The mistake was to piss off Taylor Swift fans.
Swift's "Eras Tour" will have her perform at over 50 venues in the US alone, making it one of the biggest music events on the planet. Her fans, the largest of any single artist and easily the most vocal online, have been waiting for her next tour for the past year and a half. Many of them signed up for the Verified Fans program, which was supposed to only allow a small group of real fans to buy tickets ahead of time.
The thing didn't work. 14 million users rushed to buy pre-sale tickets this week, and it broke the service, according to Michael Rapino, the CEO of the company. Millions were left waiting for hours or suffering through a miserable, glitchy experience, only to be told they couldn't buy a ticket even if they were verified. It was bombarded with 3.5 billion system requests, which is half the population of the planet and four times its previous peak.
It sold two million tickets, but it's not clear how many went to actual Swifties and how many went to scalpers.
We think that Ticketmaster has made a lot more than that. When you search its name on social media, you'll get a lot of complaints from Swifties and Ticketmaster fans.
Due to high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory, the seller has canceled the sale of tickets to the general public.
The only alternative for fans is to buy tickets from vulturous resellers who sell them at outrageous prices.
It's not a scandal to have crummy service, but the magnitude of Ticketmaster's handling of the situation has brought a lot of attention to the company's practices.
Politicians are jumping on the Swifties' complaints.
The merger of LiveNation and Ticketmaster should never have been approved and they need to be reprimanded. They should be broken up.
The chair of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law said that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is a monopoly.
The merger of these companies should not have been allowed in the first place, according to Cicilline.
One of the biggest bands in the world tried to take on Ticketmaster in the 90s. Eddie Vedder and his bandmates made the concert corporation sweat for a while. It merged with LiveNation in 2010 as its largest competitor. The merger was argued to be in violation of antitrust laws by critics.
Consumers don't have to go a long way to know that Ticketmaster is ripping them off. If you buy a ticket there, you could be charged a portion of the ticket price in service and other fees.
Another person to blame? The dynamic pricing model is used in other industries like airline tickets and hotels, in which prices are constantly adjusted based on demand. The prices of tickets are not made public before the sale starts. Dynamic pricing is supposed to keep prices competitive. It's a good excuse for Ticketmaster to match its prices with those of the ridiculous sellers.
An investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation found that the company quietly recruited professional scalpers into its program and turned a blind eye to them using hundreds of fake accounts to sell tickets.
You would think that Swift would talk about the most recent debacle over her tour.
She didn't for a while, causing fans frenzied over her silence.
On Friday, Swift spoke out on her social media accounts.
She said that she is very protective of her fans. It's hard for me to trust an outside entity with my loyalties and relationships and I have no recourse if I make a mistake.
Swift sums up the situation as there being a lot of reasons why people had a hard time getting tickets, though she never names the corporation.
The New York Times is reporting that the DOJ has opened an antitrust investigation over LiveNation's ownership of Ticketmaster.
This could be the beginning of the end for the company. It might be possible. The more bad PR Live Nation gets, the stronger it gets. Taking them down? It will take more than online anger. Maybe this time around the concert conglomerate will get a run for its money as Swift looks poised to join the fight.
There's more on Taylor Swift.
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