In December 2022, presale for Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras’ tour went live. When 14 million people tried to purchase tickets, many came up empty handed after Ticketmaster’s website crashed. Some waited hours in a queue only to come to a screen filled with grey seats and no available purchase options.
This disastrous pre-sale invited national media coverage, intense outrage from fans, and a Senate Judiciary hearing. It was the beginning of something big.
The major technology fail essentially put a huge spotlight on the lack of competition in this industry. Taylor Swift’s tour manager explained after the debacle that Live Nation’s widespread use of exclusive contracts meant they had no other option but to go with Ticketmaster.
“Ticketmaster’s exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on the ‘Eras’ tour required us to ticket through their system,” AEG said in a statement. “We didn’t have a choice.”
Live Nation owns or manages many of the major event venues in the United States. As a result, the company uses this as leverage, requiring artists that want to use their venues to ticket through Ticketmaster. It’s a strong-arm tactic that removes choice for artists and consumers, and of course keeps the flywheel going, generating more revenue for the company.
As cited in the complaint, Live Nation CEO’s has himself acknowledged the strategy:
“At the core is our flywheel. It’s the concert business . . . It’s the lower margin part of our business. But in order to get into these three high margin businesses and be competitive, we have to have that scale [in concerts].”
And this:
“[But] we have to put the show where we make the most economics, and maybe that venue [that wants to use a different ticketing platform] won’t be the best economic place anymore because we don’t hold the revenue.”
With only one ticketing platform selling tickets, there is no recourse when something like a website crash occurs and leaves fans in the dark.
Thankfully the May lawsuit from the DOJ resulted in a nice silver lining to the Eras’ tour fiasco. Hopefully this time around remedies from the agency will result in changes for the good the industry.