Next year, the music touring industry will be under more scrutiny than ever. With potential tours from Rihanna, Beyoncé and Drake rumored to be on the horizon, fans will want to get tickets. Unfortunately, the process of getting tickets through the industry’s largest platform, Ticketmaster, appears to be more difficult than one would hope.
Over the last few days, Taylor Swift fans have attempted to get tickets for her upcoming 52-date Eras Tour. In return, these fans have been met with mixed messages, long wait times and temporary outages. As a result, the company has halted the general public ticket sale that was scheduled to begin on November 18.
“The Eras on sale made one thing clear: Taylor Swift is an unstoppable force and continues to set records,” Ticketmaster stated.
“We strive to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets for the Eras Tour. We want to share some information to help explain what happened.”
This is not the first time that Ticketmaster has come under fire. For years, many critics of the platform have raised issues with its decision to merge with Live Nation and essentially root out all competition. In fact, this has become such a major issue that federal lawmakers have called out the platform.
“Taylor Swift’s tour sale is a perfect example of how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger harms consumers by creating a near-monopoly,” Senator Richard Blumenthal tweeted.
“Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services. That can result in dramatic service failures, where consumers are the ones that pay the price,” Senator Amy Klobuchar added.
Despite critiques from fans and federal lawmakers, it doesn’t appear that any immediate changes are coming to Ticketmaster.
