Week 7 post 2: Swift v ticketmaster

 In November of 2022, Taylor Swift announced her upcoming tour. This tour would feature songs from all of her albums as it was called “The Eras Tour.” Tickets were to be sold exclusively through Ticketmaster because it had deals with many of the stadiums Swift would play and was supposed to be able to handle high demand. They utilized a Verified Fan presale code where fans could sign up for the chance to earn a presale code. 1.4 million codes were sent out for a tour that could seat a maximum of 2.6 million people. Millions of people were in queues for tickets, waiting for hours and hours as Ticketmaster crashed, completely unprepared for the demand despite being responsible for sending out all of the codes. Combined with the capital one presale, 2.4 million tickets were sold within a couple days, and the regular sale was canceled. 

Swifties have led the charge on anti-trust law reform, suing Ticketmaster for intentionally and purposefully misleading presale ticket holders by providing too many codes despite the shortage of seats. Ticketmaster has dominated the industry since the 2010 Live Nation merger which gave one company access to clients, venues, tickets, and show promotion. Despite all the bad that came from the Eras Tour ticket sales, at the very least it provided public acknowledgement of business monopolies as a serious problem and gave people an initiative to fight against them.