U.S. Senators to Investigate Ticketmaster
Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee, both US senators, will head a new subcommittee looking into Ticketmaster and its ticketing monopoly. In light of the disorganized Taylor Swift Eras Tour sales last week, Klobuchar emphasized the necessity of critically examining Ticketmaster’s monopoly over the musical ticket industry.
Thousands of fans who wanted to buy concert tickets were unsuccessful in doing so on the Ticketmaster website, according to Klobuchar. Customers’ complaints about high prices, site issues, and cancellations demonstrate how Ticketmaster’s monopoly on the market relieves it of the need to constantly innovate and advance.
The Eras Tour debacle was attributed to unusually high demand and a “staggering amount of bot attacks,” leading Ticketmaster to postpone the sale of the remaining tickets. Swift, who had penned a sharp letter that included the words, “It’s incredibly difficult for me to trust an outside business with these relationships and loyaltys, and terrible for me to just watch things happen with no recourse,” lashed out at Ticketmaster. Swift continues, “we repeatedly asked them if they could handle this kind of demand and we were given their word that they could.”
Klobuchar took up the subject in a letter two days after the initial incident, connecting Ticketmaster’s “dramatic service failures” to their “power in the primary ticket market.” The Senate judiciary subcommittee on competition law, antitrust, and consumer rights is presided over by Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, while Lee, a Republican from Utah, is its ranking member. As of today, there is no established date for the hearing.
