Taylor Swift Eras tickets: Bots helped fuel presale fiasco, says Ticketmaster’s largest shareholder
Taylor Swift fans were at war with bots to get their hands on coveted tickets to the singer’s Eras tour, a major Ticketmaster shareholder has revealed.
Ticketmaster was forced to cancel its general ticket sales for Swift’s 2023 Eras tour on Thursday, citing “extraordinarily high demand” during the presale.
Advance sales for the 52 shows began Tuesday for “verified” fans of the pop star, but ended in chaos and frustration for countless people when some confirmation codes failed and thousands vie for tickets for each tour date.
As part of the fan verification process, Ticketmaster distributed unique codes to pre-registered users to prevent tickets from falling into the hands of scalper bots, who then resell them at grossly inflated prices.
However, in an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Greg Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media — Live Nation’s largest shareholder, which merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 — said the strategy hadn’t exactly gone according to plan.
“It’s a feature of Taylor Swift,” he said. “The page should open up to 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans. We had 14 million visitors to the site, including bots that weren’t supposed to be there.”
Before general sale for the tour even began, resale tickets had appeared – with ticket prices on third-party websites skyrocketing as high as $28,000.
Following the presale fiasco, fans of the Grammy winners – known as “Swifties” – have directed their frustration at Ticketmaster and shed a light on its dominance of the concert ticket market.
A petition urging the Justice Department to investigate Ticketmaster had garnered 38,245 signatures as of Friday.
Lawmakers took fan anger on board, with several speaking out about what they believe is an effective monopoly by Live Nation.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation are already under investigation by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmett following the disastrous Swift tour pre-sale event.
“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with LiveNation should never have been approved and they must be [reined] in,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote a tweet on Tuesday. “Break them.”
Live Nation and Ticketmaster now control 70% of the primary ticketing and live events market, according to the #BreakUpTicketmaster coalition of activists.
“They inflate ticket prices, charge rip-off junk fees, and exploit artists, independent venues and fans,” the organization’s website reads. “The Department of Justice can reverse this merger and bring competition back into the industry.”
However, Maffei defended the merged company on Thursday, citing its performance and how it compares to its peers.
“Interestingly, while AOC may not like every element of our business, AEG, our competitor, Taylor Swift’s promoter, chose us because, in reality, we are the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world,” he told CNBC. “Even our competitors want to come to our platform.”
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