No Taylor Swift, We Did Not Survive “The Great War”
I woke up to a tweet this morning from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez which read: “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in. Break them up.” A witty Taylor Swift fan replied, “You couldn’t get tickets either huh?”
I chuckled at the tweet, but an uneasiness overtook me as I glanced at my roommate, who sat in a state of complete disarray. After a painstakingly long wait in the Ticketmaster queue, she emerged empty-handed—she lost the war. The Taylor Swift Ticketmaster fiasco, akin to the last stretch on the battlefield, was a tragic bloodbath. An army of superfans geared up for combat, only to be bested by scalpers and bots. Families waited in despair and confusion, and bank accounts were left critically wounded. Ultimately, many were left defeated on the field.
Following the release of her 10th studio album, Midnights, Taylor Swift announced her first tour in five years: The Eras Tour. Consequently, millions of eager fans waited in anticipation to get tickets but struggled in the face of a clumsy, stress-inducing system. While Ticketmaster uses a Verified Fan program in order to give true fans a chance to purchase tickets early, and many Swifties had registered in advance— only a select few received presale codes, leaving the rest to be tossed on a hopeless waitlist. On the day of “The Great War,” millions of fans encountered lagging screens, long wait times, and site crashes at the moment of purchase. Ticketmaster gifted some fans who purchased merchandise line boosts, and yet, some reported that they emerged defeated regardless. Fans also resented Ticketmaster’s heavy service fees when the “service” proved less than favorable.
Worsening the situation, Ticketmaster made last-minute reschedules, pushing back presale times due to “unforeseen numbers” for the nation’s biggest pop star. Fans who scheduled their entire work days around the given times were distraught. Perhaps most devastating, Ticketmaster canceled public sales due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand,” leaving any fan who did not manage to obtain a presale code completely hopeless (unless they want to cough up $35,000 for resale tickets).
After a few days of outrage, Swift broke the silence on her Instagram stories, saying, “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.” Ticketmaster quickly followed suit, releasing a typical PR blend of an apology and a clumsy dance around taking responsibility. It noted that “based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing).” With such historic numbers, it is condonable that most fans emerged empty-handed. However, the confusion, chaos, distress, and opacity? Not so easily justified.
The Swift-Ticketmaster debacle is only one battle of a much broader, more pervasive war: the complete domination of the ticket business. Following Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s merger in 2010, ticket prices have skyrocketed, service fees have increased, and a lack of transparency continues to disillusion consumers. According to The New York Times, the Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation of Live Nation Entertainment, examining if the enterprise has abused its leverage in the industry. In a letter to Ticketmaster CEO Michael Rapino, Amy Klobuchar— chair of the Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights— protests, “Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services.” As Senator Klobuchar points out, consumers are left in the trenches once again while towering CEOs reap the benefits.
Where are artists left in the midst of the battle? Torn between appeasing diehard fans and limited ticketing options, performers like Swift often cry “Don’t Blame Me” despite their consequential role in the process. Eric Budish, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, reports that artists rake in the larger share of ticket-sale profits. Moreover, Swift and Ticketmaster both had the capability to minimize scalpers by restricting resale tickets—ideally, by “set[ting] the price you think is a fair price and turn[ing] off the resale market.” Of course, as the less profitable option, this route is rarely taken.
Though Swift did not “give us peace,” perhaps a further examination into this ticket monopolisation will ease future concertgoers. In the meantime, we can mourn the fallen Swiftie soldiers who did not survive the treacherous Ticketmaster war.
