On November 1, Swift, 32, announced a 27-date tour in 20 US cities, which will run from March to August next year – sparking fan chaos.
Tickets went on sale on Tuesday, but what Ticketmaster called “historically unprecedented demand” from millions of fans saw the site crash repeatedly and the process spiral into fiasco, with supporters furious at rising prices and spending hours waiting in line.
Now, after Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti revealed that he has launched an investigation into Ticketmaster, the site has issued a lengthy response blaming bots and fans without invite codes for driving “unprecedented traffic” of 3.5 billion users – four times the normal amount .
Dear: Ticketmaster has blamed a ‘surprising number of bot attacks’ for causing a tidal wave of problems for Taylor Swift fans seeking to buy tickets for her Eras tour (pictured last week)
A statement read: “Eras on sale made one thing clear: Taylor Swift is an unstoppable force and continues to set records. We try to make buying tickets as easy as possible for fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy Eras Tour tickets. We want to share some information to explain what happened.
Ticketmaster explained that fans had to sign up to its Verified Fan system before the sale began, which is designed to “help manage high-demand shows – finding real people and eliminating bots.”
The statement continued: “Based on the fan interest upon registration, we knew this was going to be big. Over 3.5 million people pre-registered for Taylor’s Verified Fan, which is the largest subscription in history.
Fiasco: Tickets went on sale on Tuesday but what Ticketmaster called “historically unprecedented demand” from millions of fans saw the site crash repeatedly and the process end in fiasco (pictured September)
“The huge demand for Taylor’s tour has informed the artist team’s decision to add additional dates – doubling the tour and the number of tickets available so more fans can get to the shows.
“Historically, about 40% of invited fans actually show up and buy tickets, and most buy an average of 3 tickets. So, working with the artist team, approximately 1.5 million people were invited to participate in the sale for all 52 show dates, including the 47 sold by Ticketmaster.
“The remaining 2 million Verified Fans have been put on the waiting list.”
Adding demand for Taylor “broke records and parts of our website,” the statement continued: “Historically, working with verified fan invitation codes has worked as we’ve been able to manage the volume coming onto the website to purchase tickets.
“However, this time the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who did not have invite codes resulted in unprecedented traffic to our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak.
“Never before has a Verified Fan on sale attracted so much attention – or unsolicited volume. This disrupted the predictability and reliability that is the hallmark of the Verified Fan platform.
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“Usually it takes us about an hour to sell out at a stadium show, but we’ve slowed down some sales and pushed back others to stabilize the systems. The trade-off was longer queue times for some fans.
“Overall, we estimate that approximately 15% of interactions across the entire site experienced issues, and that’s 15% too many, including password validation errors that caused fans to lose their carted tickets.”
They added: “The biggest venues and artists turn to us because we have the world’s leading ticketing technology – that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and clearly for Taylor Discounts it wasn’t. But we are always working to improve the ticketing experience. Especially for the high demand in sales, which continue to test new limits.
“Even when the high demand sales are going flawlessly technologically, many fans are left empty-handed. For example: based on the amount of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to do over 900 stadium shows (almost 20 times the number of shows she does)…that’s a stadium show every night for the next 2.5 years.
“While it’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on.”
The Eras Tour would sell an astonishing and record 2 million tickets in just one day.
Answer: The site has issued a lengthy response blaming bots and fans without invite codes for driving the “unprecedented traffic” of 3.5 billion users – four times the normal amount.
This comes as AG SkrmettI launched an investigation into Ticketmaster following the ticket debacle, probing the ticketing giant’s processes “to ensure no consumer protection laws were breached”.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday called for Ticketmaster to break up.
“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, their merger with LiveNation should never have been approved and they need to prevail,” he said.
“Break them apart.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal agreed, tweeting: “The sale of Taylor Swift’s tour is a perfect example of how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger is hurting consumers by creating a near monopoly.
“I have long urged the Department of Justice to investigate the state of competition in the ticketing industry. Consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior.’
Jonathan Skrmetti said his office had received multiple complaints, with the official account tweeting on Tuesday: “Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is concerned about consumer complaints related to the presale of @taylorswift13 concert tickets by on @Ticketmaster.
“He and his consumer protection team will use every tool available to ensure that no consumer protection laws have been breached.”
On Wednesday, Skrmetti said he wanted to make sure there was no wrongdoing.
“We received a number of complaints and there was significant press coverage that the ticketing process did not go smoothly,” he told ABC News affiliate WATE.
Jonathan Skrmetti, Tennessee’s attorney general, said Wednesday he is launching an investigation into Ticketmaster to ensure consumer rights are protected
“There are no allegations, at this time, of any misconduct. But as attorney general, it’s my job to make sure consumer protection laws and antitrust laws are upheld in Tennessee.”
He added that he is concerned about a potential monopoly.
“We’re talking about a company with an extremely dominant market share, I’ve heard it can be up to 70 percent of the concert venue, ticket sales.
“Anytime you have this kind of concentration of market share, there’s a risk that the lack of competition doesn’t just drive up prices for consumers.
“It will also reduce the quality of the product and potentially this is a situation where the quality of the product is reduced.”
Ticketmaster has not responded to Skrmetti’s inquiry, but has apologized to customers.
In a statement on Tuesday, the company said waiting fans should “please stay safe,” citing “historically unprecedented demand” from millions.
The company also delayed one of the pre-sales by a full day.
The American ticketing industry, which is overwhelmingly dominated by Ticketmaster, has for years left concertgoers frustrated by hidden fees, rising costs, rampant scalpers and limited sell-out tickets.
In 2010, Ticketmaster and event promotion behemoth Live Nation merged, which Congressman David Cicilline on Tuesday called an “unbridled monopoly.”
He and other lawmakers called in 2021 for a Justice Department investigation into Live Nation’s “efforts to raise prices and stifle competition.”
Swift’s fans have a huge online presence and zeal that puts them in a good position to draw attention to their plight, but Christa Brown — an analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project, which urged decommissioning the merger — said the chaos is final example”.
“This is not about an artist’s concert or a website crashing,” Brown told AFP.
“Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment have an industry monopoly that allows them to regularly abuse their power, leaving customers, artists and venues at their mercy.”
Live Nation recently reported an increase in demand after several years of the pandemic, saying ticket sales were up 37% compared to 2019.
But while fans have complained about the high cost — Bruce Springsteen’s thousands-of-dollar prices caused an uproar earlier this year — Ticketmaster responded to a recent query from agent Bill Pascrell by blaming the resale market and saying that “promoters and representatives artists set pricing strategy and price range parameters.
“As the ticket resale market has grown into a $10 billion-plus industry in recent years, artists and bands have lost that revenue to resellers,” Ticketmaster said, saying event organizers were scrambling to “recoup that lost revenue ” through the “market”. -based pricing.’
Swift’s fans had expressed on Tuesday about problems buying tickets for The Eras tour with a presale code through Ticketmaster
“The goal is to give the most passionate fans fair and secure access to the most in-demand tickets, while allowing artists and everyone involved in organizing live events to price tickets closer to their fair value.”
However, “dynamic pricing” appears to have caused…
