Ticketmaster Has a Monopoly. Fans Hate It, but Artists Love It
November 15, 2022, was a disastrous day for millions of Americans. They woke up, logged online, and received poor customer service. These people were eager to get concert tickets but were met with service outages and site crashes. Of course, this is nothing new, so what made this day different?
The victims were Swifties. Tickets were on sale for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, and demand far outweighed supply.
But, let’s not oversimplify the issue. The average ticket price for the show was estimated at $215, and that’s before we look at resale costs. Approximately 14 million people waited for tickets, but 2.4 million tickets were sold. By nature, many people will be upset, but the day was plagued with technical issues. Potential customers spent hours in virtual queues just to lose their place or face crashes. Those who did get tickets were faced with sticker shock but had to settle for high prices. And this was all on the presale day, which exhausted supplies so much that general public sales were canceled.
Or, in the words of Taylor, fans went through “multiple bear attacks” to secure tickets. She wishes things were different, but they weren’t, so she’s not going to do anything about it. Why? Because Ticketmaster fundamentally has a monopoly.
