Concert tour ticket sales issues
The American ticket sales platform Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment were met with widespread public criticism and political scrutiny over blunders in selling tickets to the 2023 United States leg of the Eras Tour, the sixth concert tour by Taylor Swift, in November 2022. Media outlets described the demand for the Eras Tour's tickets as "astronomical", with 3.5 million people registering for the Ticketmaster's Verified Fan pre-sale program in the U.S. 
When the sale went online on November 15, 2022, the website crashed in an hour, with users logged out or in a frozen queue; however, 2.4 million tickets were sold, breaking the record for the highest single-day ticket sales ever by an artist. Ticketmaster attributed the crash to heavy site traffic—"historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up"—but users complained about poor customer service. Live Nation blamed Swift's "staggering" demand "overwhelming" them beyond capacity, and canceled the general sale due to "insufficient" inventory along with an apology.
Scalpers had purchased a large number of tickets and put them on ticket resale websites for exorbitant prices. Numerous fans and consumer groups alleged that Ticketmaster was deceitful. In response, several U.S. Congress members voiced to revert the 2010 merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which they dubbed a monopoly lacking competitive pressure, leading to substandard service and extortionate prices. Swift's tour promoter, AEG Presents, said Ticketmaster's exclusive deals with the majority of U.S. live venues coerced AEG into working with them. In December 2022, several fans sued Ticketmaster for many violations such as intentional deception, fraud, price fixing, and antitrust. Publications opined the controversy highlighted one of the longstanding issues in the music industry and that the U.S. Department of Justice had been investigating the merger. 
In 2023, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee examined the fiasco with a hearing, where bipartisan senators castigated Ticketmaster. States such as New York, Texas, Massachusetts, and California outlawed scalper bots and regulated pricing models. Following pressure from Joe Biden, the U.S. president, Ticketmaster and other ticket platforms agreed to abolish junk fees and show consumers all the fees upfront. The Federal Trade Commission decided to impose a federal ban on all deceptive, surprise fees. Ticketmaster again faced criticism when the United Kingdom and French sales of the Eras Tour experienced similar issues, and was issued a subpoena from the U.S. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In May 2024, the U.S. federal government, co-signed by 29 U.S. states, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation–Ticketmaster, alleging unlawful business practices that have been detrimental to the live music industry and seeking to dissolve the merger.
Background.
Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. is an American ticket sales and distribution company based in Beverly Hills, California with operations in many countries around the world. It was founded in Phoenix, Arizona in 1976 by college staffers Peter Gadwa and Albert Leffler, as well as businessman Gordon Gunn III.
In 1994, American rock band Pearl Jam filed a complaint with the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice, claiming that Ticketmaster has a "virtually absolute monopoly on the distribution of tickets to concerts" and attempted to book its tour only at venues that did not use Ticketmaster. However, no action was taken on Ticketmaster. In the 21st century, Ticketmaster became the largest ticket sales company in the world.
In February 2009, Ticketmaster entered into an agreement to merge with the world's largest event promoter, Live Nation, to form Live Nation Entertainment. The deal was cleared by the U.S. Justice Department in January 2010 under the condition that the company sell Paciolan to Comcast Spectacor or another firm, and license its software to Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), its biggest competitor. The new company, which would be called Live Nation Entertainment, would also be subject to provisions for 10 years that prevented it from retaliating against venues that partnered with competing ticketing firms. Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino was named CEO of the new company.
Ticketmaster was the subject of several controversies, such as anti-competition claims, deceitful relationships with scalpers, data breach, deceptive pricing, and dynamic pricing. According to consumer organizations, Ticketmaster and Live Nation control over 70% of the primary ticketing and live event venues market. The merger has faced longstanding criticism. Earlier in 2022, both Ticketmaster and Live Nation received public backlash and media attention on their dynamic pricing and "platinum" ticket model when tickets for Bruce Springsteen's and Blink-182's 2023 tours (both of which were being promoted by Live Nation) went on sale in July and October respectively. Fans of both acts criticized the price of random seats across the venue going for hundreds or even thousands of dollars during pre-sales or general public sales.
Taylor Swift.
American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift released her tenth studio album, "Midnights", on October 21, 2022, to widespread commercial success and critical acclaim. On November 1, she announced on "Good Morning America" and through her social media accounts that her sixth concert tour, in support of "Midnights" and all of her previous albums, would be called the Eras Tour. Its U.S. leg, which initially consisted of 27 dates across 20 cities, started on March 17, 2023, in Glendale, Arizona, and concluded on August 9, 2023, in Inglewood, California, with tickets sold via Ticketmaster. This marks Swift's first shows in the U.S. since her Reputation Stadium Tour in 2018, which broke the record for the highest grossing U.S. tour in history. Some of the dates, such as those in Glendale, were sold via SeatGeek. Following popular demand, on November 4, Swift added eight extra U.S. dates to existing cities, bringing the total number of concerts to 35. Higher demand prompted 17 more shows to be added the following week, making the Eras Tour the biggest U.S. tour of Swift's career, with 52 dates, surpassing Reputation Stadium Tour's 38 dates.
The U.S. tickets were set to go on sale to the general public on November 18, 2022. Capital One cardholders had presale access on November 15. Fans registered for the Ticketmaster Verified Fan program from November 1 through 9 to receive a presale code that granted exclusive access to the TaylorSwiftTix Presale on November 15. Swift abandoned the "platinum ticket" model for the tour. According to Ticketmaster, the TaylorSwiftTix Presale provided "the best opportunity to get more tickets into the hands of fans who want to attend the show" by evading bots and scalpers. It noted that if the demand exceeds supply, it is possible that "verified fans may be selected at random to participate in the presale." "USA Today" reported that the listing for the Nashville dates included the disclaimer that "ticket prices may fluctuate, based on demand, at any time."
Website crash.
The Eras Tour recorded an incredibly high demand for tickets, ultimately exposing significant issues in operational preparedness. On November 15, the day of the pre-sale, Ticketmaster's website crashed following "historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up", halting the presale. In less than an hour of availability, the ticketing platform's servers were "unable to answer", with users experiencing turbulence—"either completely logged out or in a queue 2,000-plus people strong that appeared frozen" as per "Rolling Stone". Ticketmaster immediately published a statement saying they are working to fix the issues "as the site was unprepared to accommodate the sheer force of hundreds of thousands of Swift fans", and subsequently reported that "hundreds of thousands of tickets" had already been sold and postponed the remainder of the presale, including the Capital One presale to November 16. The public on-sale was later canceled due to "extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand". The Eras Tour sold over two million tickets on its first day of presale alone, breaking the all-time record for the most concert tickets sold by an artist in a single day.
During and immediately after the website crash, Ticketmaster was widely criticized by fans and customers on social media for its ticketing model that obstructed purchasing. According to "The New York Times", the ticket sale failure "broke the internet". "Ticketmaster" trended number one worldwide on various social media platforms such as Twitter and TikTok. CNN Business stated that the "astronomical" demand indicated Swift's popularity. However, "Fortune" and Bloomberg News attributed the criticism to Ticketmaster's "oft-confusing multistep buying process plagued with additional fees", as well as "long waits, technical problems, and poor customer service".
Responses and impact.
Concerned parties.
Greg Maffei, chairman of Live Nation, spoke to CNBC on November 16. He claimed that Ticketmaster prepared for 1.5 million verified fans but 14 million showed up: "we could have filled 900 stadiums." In a detailed statement, Ticketmaster explained that 3.5 million fans pre-registered for the Verified Fan program—the largest in platform history—two million of whom were placed on the waitlist while 1.5 million were allowed to purchase first, as only "40% of invited fans actually show up and buy tickets, and most purchase an average of 3 tickets." However, the website was overwhelmed by the "staggering" number of fans as well as bots without presale codes, resulting in "3.5 billion total system requests—[four times the site's] previous peak." Therefore, Ticketmaster attempted to slow down the sale by waitlisting more customers "to stabilize the systems", which in turn prolonged the queue and waiting time. The company confirmed on November 17 that the November 18 public on-sale was canceled as well, citing inability to meet demand.
Maffei also claimed that "AEG, our competitor, who is the promoter for Taylor Swift, chose to use us because, in reality, we are the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world... Even our competitors want to come on our platform." However, AEG rejected Maffei's claim that AEG chose to work with Ticketmaster, stating that AEG was forced to work with Ticketmaster since "Ticketmaster's exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on the Eras Tour required us to ticket through their system."
Swift released a statement on November 18, 2022, via her Instagram story; she stated that she is "pissed off" and found the fiasco "excruciating". She asserted that she is protective of her fans and wanted to assure a quality experience and claimed that it had been difficult to "trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties". She noted that she was "not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked [Ticketmaster], multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could."
Later that same day, Ticketmaster issued an apology "to Taylor and all of her fans" via their Twitter account, but remarked that "less than 5% of the tickets for the tour have been sold or posted for resale on the secondary market" such as StubHub. Ticketmaster also dismissed accusations of anti-competitive practices, noting it remains "under a consent decree with the Justice Department following its 2010 merger with Live Nation" and the absence of "evidence of systemic violations of the consent decree."
Former Ticketmaster CEO Fred Rosen was unmoved by fans' outrage, telling the "Los Angeles Times": "The public brought all this on itself... I have no sympathy for people whining about high ticket prices... They helped create this situation where artists have to make all their money on tour. Artists and the market set the prices, and you can't pay a Motel 6 price and stay at the Four Seasons." Rosen argued that all proposed solutions risked leaving fans even worse off: "Ticketmaster got thrown under the bus because it's easy to throw them under the bus... There is no solution that won't piss people off more."
On December 12, 2022, Ticketmaster began mailing select registered fans—"identified as [fans] who received a boost during the Verified Fan presale but did not purchase tickets"—and notified them of a second ticket-purchasing opportunity, with which they can buy a maximum of two tickets each. Ticketmaster stated that Swift's team asked the company to create this opportunity for fans. "Billboard" reported that Ticketmaster opted to sell the remaining 170,000 unsold seats over four weeks through Ticketstoday, a ticketing platform that was originally built for Dave Matthews Band's fanclub in the 2000s but was later sold to Live Nation, to "significantly reduce fan wait times" and avoid high website traffic.
Fans and consumers.
Swift's fans, known as "Swifties", were particularly upset with the fiasco, some of whom proceeded with legal action. Lawyers who were fans of Swift mobilized a grassroots group called Vigilante Legal LLC., a play on Swift's 2022 song "Vigilante Shit"; its core