Pearl Jam is currently trending on Twitter, and all it took was a Taylor Swift pre-sale.

thanks for this memory

Well this dumpster fire just won't be put out

Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour Public Ticket On-Sale Canceled ‘Due to Extraordinarily High Demands’

The article I read said there isn’t enough inventory to justify a public sale. How do you “accidentally” sell all your tickets thru exclusive presales?

She’s probably “reselling” the bulk of them at tremendously marked up prices.

She's probably going to sell the rest of them through a series of scavenger hunts for live nation gift certificates where the contestants are picked to enter based on how many instagram and tiktok pics and videos they post of themselves with embarrassing pleas for tickets with a bunch of cats on their laps.

Spoiler: show

I'm not kidding.

Or that

I had multiple people try to reach out to me, knowing my battle wounds with getting PJ tickets, to give me tips on trying to get Taylor Swift tickets. My response summed up to "LOL good luck".

well this just got interesting.

Justice Department Opens Investigation Into Live Nation Over Monopoly Concerns
The DOJ's antitrust division had reportedly started looking into the concert giant's alleged monopoly as owner of Ticketmaster

BY JON BLISTEIN

THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT is investigating whether Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation has abused its power as the dominant force in the live music industry, The New York Times reports.

News of the investigation broke at the end of a chaotic week for Ticketmaster, which was unable to handle the massive demand for tickets for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour.” The Swift debacle, however, is just the latest instance where Ticketmaster/Live Nation has garnered scrutiny, with similar chaos and frustrations over wait times and price mark-ups surrounding ticket sales for artists like Harry Styles and Bruce Springsteen.

Despite the timing of the news, the DOJ’s antitrust division had already spent several months digging into Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Though specifics are scarce, the investigation appears to be looking at whether Live Nation does have a monopoly over the industry.

While it isn’t clear who’s been in contact, one source confirms to Rolling Stone that federal investigators had been in touch with them, asking general inquiries regarding antitrust concerns with Live Nation

The Department of Justice declined to comment further. Reps for Live Nation were not immediately available to return Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.

Along with the reported investigation, this week saw calls from congress to look into Live Nation. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar — who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights — sent a letter to Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino expressing concern over what she called a lack of competition in the live music industry. New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also criticized the Live Nation/Ticketmaster “monopoly” and called to “break them up.” (After news of the DOJ investigation broke, AOC tweeted, “That was fast.”)

Ticketmaster, of course, has faced plenty of criticism over the decades — Pearl Jam famously tried to take on the company in the Nineties — and its merger with Live Nation in 2010 was approved despite some fierce opposition in the industry. The last time Live Nation faced such federal scrutiny was in 2019, when it was reported that the DOJ was preparing a lawsuit alleging that Live Nation was pressuring convert venues into using Ticketmaster over other ticketing systems. Such competition-stifling actions were prohibited under the consent decree of the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger.

Ultimately, Live Nation settled with the government, extending the expiration of the consent decree to December 2025 and agreeing to new language about what the company could and couldn’t do when negotiating deals with venues.

Live Nation issued a statement following news of the investigation, stating that the “demand for live entertainment continues to grow” and that the “Department of Justice itself recognized the competitive nature of the concert promotion business at the time of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger. That dynamic has not changed.” The company also insisted that they are “the most transparent and fan-friendly ticketing system in the United States.”

Spoiler: show

Taylor Swift should share some of the blame. She could’ve very easily shut down the resale market by having people’s names electronically stamped on the tickets.

The question might be whether she wants it shut down, as there would be inevitable deadweight loss when people locked into their tickets have shit come up that prevents them from going.

Ticketmaster just needs to stop being in bed with the secondary market.

If the goal is to get as close to market value as possible, Ticketmaster should just cut out all the sideshow shenanigans and auction tickets off to the highest bidder from the very start.

They have raised the ire of the Swifties!

Taylor Swift fans sue Ticketmaster over Eras tour sale fiasco

Mexico to Level Massive Fine Against Ticketmaster After Bad Bunny Ticket Disaster
"It is important to highlight that there was no overcrowding or overselling of tickets," Ticketmaster Mexico said in a statement

BY NIKKI MCCANN RAMIREZ



THE BEATING HEART of Mexico’s entertainment industry lies at the Estadio Azteca, the largest stadium in Latin America. Hundreds of thousands of fans throughout its history have cheered on the giants of sports, music, and culture from its grandstands. Over the weekend, what should have been the triumphant end to Bad Bunny’s World’s Hottest Tour was drowned out by the complaints of hundreds of distraught ticket holders who were left stranded outside its gates. In response Mexico’s PROFECO, the government body charged with consumer protection, has announced it will be fining Ticketmaster as much as 10 percent of Ticketmaster Mexico’s 2021 revenue.

Hundreds of fans reported that their tickets, allegedly purchased through Ticketmaster, were unceremoniously denied entry to the concert. Many were told that their tickets were either fraudulent or cloned. Inside the Azteca, large swaths of the typically packed standing room section were visibly bare. Tickermaster released a statement blaming a “high unprecedented number of fake tickets” for the debacle and promised to issue refunds to affected fans.

PROFECO isn’t buying it. The organization put out a call for fans to report instances of wrongfully denied entry, announcing over the weekend that it had identified at least 1,600 instances of duplicated tickets and would be fining the company for “over selling” entries to the concert. Riccardo Sheffield, head of the agency, indicated in an interview with Mexico’s Radio Formula that the fine and penalties could amount to millions of pesos.

“As it has been informed, on Friday an unprecedented number of counterfeit tickets, purchased out of our official channels, were presented at the entrances to the venue,” Ticketmaster Mexico said in a statement. “This situation, in addition to confusion among the access control staff, caused temporary intermittence in the access control system, which unfortunately impeded the identification of legitimate tickets for some moments. It is important to highlight that there was no overcrowding or overselling of tickets.”

“Ticketmaster does not tolerate or participate in ticket reselling, which it has historically denounced by our company to the authorities and encouraged actions against it,” the company continued, adding that ticket resale is prohibited by law in Mexico. “Consequently, it repudiates the sale of tickets out of our official channels, where counterfeit tickets are frequently offered; and once again, we encourage fans to avoid buying through resale, given the obvious risks of being defrauded.”

The company added it was collaborating with the investigation by the Consumer Protection Federal Agency, and said that it took “necessary technological and logistical measures” for the concert on Saturday night. “This technical work was what guaranteed the efficient filling of the venue, and the functionality of the access control system,” it stated, and reiterated its apology and encouraged fans with legitimate tickets who were unable to enter the Dec. 9 show to request a full refund by emailing contactanos@ticketmaster.com.mx.

Mexico’s quick action stands in contrast to plodding probes by U.S. lawmakers and regulators. Despite years of consumer complaints regarding Ticketmaster’s monopolistic practices and accusations that its “dynamic pricing system” is little more than glorified price gouging, U.S. lawmakers and the Department of Justice have only recently moved to investigate the company, and the timeline for decisive action is uncertain.

The disastrous rollout of ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated Eras drew intense criticisms from American concertgoers against Ticketmaster. Hundreds of thousands of fans attempting to acquire tickets experienced hours-long waits, website crashes, and a pre-sale demand so high Ticketmaster canceled its general sale. On the secondary market, tickets for the tour were being hawked at truly mind bogglingly high prices — like $35,000 for floor seats high.

The debacle revived long standing issues fans have had with the company, most of them stemming from its 2009 merger with LiveNation, which has given the companies a dominant share of the entertainment market within the United States and abroad. A decade and a half later, lawmakers can no longer look past the discontent of fans.

Responding to complaints from frustrated Swifties, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted a call for the company to be broken up. “Ticketmaster is a monopoly,” she wrote, “its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in.”

Ocasio-Cortez later told Rolling Stone that she and other lawmakers “already had concerns about Ticketmaster and monopoly power prior to 2010. But now you’ve got the nation’s largest ticket vendor with the nation’s largest promoter,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Our concerns here can affect everyone. It could affect the artists from being able to conduct the shows the way they want, from promotions to the way that tickets are sold and structured. And it affects fans because they are being absolutely fleeced.”

Pressure from members of Congress prompted the Department of Justice to move forward with a probe into monopolistic practices by Ticketmaster and LiveNation. LiveNation responded with a reminder that the DOJ had itself approved its merger with Ticketmaster, and insisted it remains “the most transparent and fan-friendly ticketing system in the United States.”

It remains unclear if or when the DOJ will announce concrete action against Ticketmaster, but the actions taken by Mexico’s PROFECO demonstrates there is more than one way to secure restitution for jilted fans and penalize mismanagement.

Subtle.
Zach Bryan Surprise-Releases New Live LP ‘All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster’

Excellent work by our elected representatives.