Highlighted most recently by their lack of preparation for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” leading to the cancellation of the general sale of tickets, the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger has been under scrutiny since before it even began. Though this might be a lot of people’s first time hearing about or falling victim to what many consider a ticketing monopoly, the plans formulated over the past decades to disband it are only strengthened by this case.
The Ticketmaster-Live Nation Merger
Ticketmaster was founded in 1976 as an American ticket sales and distribution company. By 1994, beloved rock band Pearl Jam rose awareness of unnecessary fees on their concert ticket prices, initiating the idea of a ticketing monopoly. While this was dismissed at the time, these additional fees have increased to up to 78% of tickets’ face values. Live Nation was later founded in 1996 as an American events promoter and venue operator, and despite growing antitrust toward ticketing monopolies, was allowed to merge with Ticketmaster in 2010 to create Live Nation Entertainment. The merger now makes $11.9 billion a year, crediting at least $3 billion to gross profit.
Though the service was meant to make enjoying live events as accessible to the general public as possible, the merger has been uncovered to withhold over 90% of tickets from general sale for the secondary market, comprised of brokers and scalpers who inflate the prices up to 7000%. By teaming up with these resellers, Live Nation Entertainment is able to create contracts to profit off these markups far more than they would’ve selling tickets to the general public for face value. Due to this, there is more motivation to allow these scalpers into sales and presales than verified fans or the general public. From the moment Ticketmaster, and moreover Live Nation Entertainment, was created, it has never been free of antitrust and deceptive reselling lawsuits; from Bruce Springsteen’s 2010 tour where fans were redirected to TicketNow where inflated and nonexistent seats were sold, to the withholding of the 2015 NBA Finals tickets that made the cheapest tickets available $699.
Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour”
Despite the countless lawsuits and protests, the merger has never received as much negative attention as it did the week of November 15, 2022, when Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” presale was mishandled so poorly that the general sale had to be cancelled. Recently becoming the first artist to occupy all top ten spots of Billboard’s Hot 100, Taylor Swift is undoubtedly one of the biggest artists of all time, making it no surprise that the site traffic and sales for this tour would be unprecedented.
Due to this, there were multiple presale systems created to aid the process: a verified fan presale where fans were randomly granted access codes, and a Capital One presale where cardholders were able to use part of their credit card numbers as access codes. However, during the first presale, the verified fan presale, fans noticed they weren’t asked their access codes before joining the queue to enter the site, meaning anyone could have access to the site. If these access codes had been required, 1.5 million people would’ve had access to verified fan presale the morning of November 15, 2022. Instead, the site had 14 million visitors, causing it to break and pause multiple times, ultimately giving fans a 5% chance of acquiring tickets. By the end of the day, there were countless horror stories of fans being on the site for over five hours, getting redirected to the queue multiple times, and access codes not working.
Yet still almost nobody had the seats they were hoping for, as countless desired seats, oftentimes in rows of six, were being resold for upwards of $100,000 just hours after presale ended. While some resellers could’ve been promising seats they didn’t have, it was undeniable that while actual verified fans didn’t get tickets, scalpers could acquire hundreds for each show. The next day was the Capital One cardholder presale, where once again, fans weren’t asked to present access codes ahead of time, causing the site to crash and run out of inventory within the three hours most fans were still in the queue. After this, Ticketmaster put out a statement that the general sale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Era’s Tour was canceled, meaning fans without access codes or Capital One cards had a 0% chance of purchasing tickets for face value.
The failure to properly manage Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” led Tennessee Attorney General, Jonathan Skrmetti, to launch yet another investigation of Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s violation of consumer protection laws.
So What Is Biden’s Plan to Abolish Ticketmaster?
With the endless controversy of the ticketing monopoly, the Biden administration has been working, under pressure from Congress, to foster actions that give the Federal Trade Commission more power to penalize unfair and deceptive “junk fees.” On October 26, 2022, just weeks before the incident, Biden announced his emerging plan to crack down on deceptive additional fees such as those on ticketing. Calling out the illegality of surprise overdraft fees, Biden explained his plan to make them more transparent to motivate decrease, as well as a reimplementation of competition to lower prices, something erased by monopolies like the merger. Though Ticketmaster and Live Nation Entertainment have been able to escape multiple investigations and criticisms in the past, it can be hoped that the unprecedented nature of Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” may bring unprecedented repercussions.