It's the burning story of the week – Ticketmaster's inability to sell any tickets for TSwift's upcoming mega tour. Ticketmaster issued a lengthy explainer – which they then almost immediately deleted when the media picked it up – about what led to the chaos that erupted over tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, which went on sale on Tuesday.
The company’s website crashed because of the fan demand, while tons of fans who did get into the queue had to wait for over two hours to get a chance at purchasing tickets. Other fans got blindsided by being sent to a wait list. Backlash against Ticketmaster exploded, with US House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling for the company’s merger with Live Nation to be broken up. Ticketmaster had Taylor Swift fans pre-register as Verified Fans before the sale.
The company uses the Verified Fan program “to help manage high demand shows — identifying real humans and weeding out bots." 3.5 million fans pre-registered, but what Ticketmaster failed to tell anyone was that 2 million of those were sent to said wait list. Cue outrage. The company's site was still overwhelmed and crashed anyway – and now any further sales have been cancelled, which has turned into outright digital war between Swifty's stans and the platform – even involving US politicians. “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned [sic] in,” tweeted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shortly after the debacle unfolded on Tuesday. “They need to break up.” Ticketmaster, which acts as a facilitator between venues and performers, merged in 2010 with Live Nation, a company that owns venues as well as sells tickets and promotes tours, to create Live Nation Entertainment, now Ticketmaster’s parent company. It's going be interesting to see where this ends up. Taylor is yet to comment. Via Variety & multiple outlets