US Senate Front Ticket Master | A study of failure

The tour was a disaster Periods

To understand the genesis of this saga, you have to go back to last November: after its 10 release.^e album, midnightsTaylor Swift has announced her return to the stage with her tour Periods. Tickets will go on sale on November 18 and pre-sale on November 15. On November 17, a dramatic turn of events: Ticketmaster announces the cancellation of official sales to the general public, citing “insufficient inventory of remaining tickets.” Disgruntled fans are complaining of not being able to get tickets after endless hours of waiting, errors and crashes, which Ticketmaster says has been hit by more than 3.5 million people registered on the platform. Robot attacks. The pop star joins a chorus of critics — without naming Ticketmaster. The political backlash wasn’t long in coming, with several US attorneys general announcing they were investigating the company for alleged “deceptive or unfair trade practices”. U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote an open letter to Ticketmaster President and CEO Michael Rabino asking him to answer questions about the company’s business practices.

Expected audience

Joe Berchtold, president and chief financial officer of LiveNation (Ticketmaster’s parent company), acknowledged Tuesday that the company could have done better. He even went so far as to apologize to Taylor Swift and her fans during the trial, which is expected to begin in late 2022. Despite everything, he wanted to remember that it was not Ticketmaster who determined the price of tickets or the number of seats. Available per concert, and service charges set by performance venues are even lower. He also recalled shared responsibility for “bot attacks” that significantly slowed the site’s operations during ticket sales for the tour. Periods. According to him, the events department wants elected officials to pay more attention to the issue of ticket resale to prevent fraudulent practices such as the resale of tickets that have not yet been officially put on sale.

Corruption is very high

As of early December, Ticketmaster (and Live Nation) had already faced more than two dozen lawsuits for pre-selling and canceling general public ticket sales for the tour. Periods By Taylor Swift. Affected fans believe that Ticketmaster opened pre-sales to “certified” fans, knowing that there weren’t enough seats to meet demand, in addition to allowing Taylor Swift’s tour tickets to be resold at prices far above the original price. Pres After the official sale was canceled, he found himself reselling a ticket to Swift’s show in Texas for $38,000.

However, charges against Ticketmaster have not been filed since last fall. A lot of ink has been spilled over prohibitive prices for concerts, especially for resale tickets, but also for seats on normal sale. For example, tickets for the band Blink-182’s tour sold for more than $1,000 in regular sales and up to $13,000 in resale. Ticket prices for Bruce Springsteen concerts, some of them thousands of dollars, have caused an uproar in early 2022. Ticketmaster has been operating its own resale system since 2018. Asked by Pres Last year, the company pledged to invest millions of dollars in technology to fight against “bots” that allow people to buy large numbers of tickets.

Monopoly?

“Live Nation is so powerful that it doesn’t need to apply any pressure, it doesn’t need to make threats. People are falling in line,” Sen. Amy Globuchar, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, denounced Tuesday. “This is the definition of monopoly,” he said. In 2010, Ticketmaster merged with US events giant Live Nation, which also owns a number of concert venues. Live Nation President Joe Berchtold told the Senate Tuesday that Ticketmaster lost, not gained, market share after its merger. 70% of concert tickets in major US venues are now sold through Ticketmaster. With more than 500 million tickets sold worldwide each year – in more than 30 countries – it is the largest company in the industry.

With the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse