Last November millions of people sat at their computers anxiously anticipating the opportunity to purchase tickets to see Taylor Swift live in concert. Taylor had released four new albums (not including re-releases of her old albums) since her last tour in 2018. Taylor’s most recent album Midnights shattered numerous records upon its release, reaching 185 million streams on the day of its release. To no surprise, the demand for concert tickets were at an all-time high.
Unfortunately, many fans including I were left extremely disappointed when trying to purchase tickets. This is because the only way that tickets were able to be purchased was solely through the company Ticketmaster. On the day the tickets went on sale, Ticketmaster reported 3.5 billion system requests to buy tickets. After many waited through technical errors and hour-long cue lines, only 2 million tickets were sold that day.
While it is easy to point to Swift’s world-wide popularity as a reason for this high demand, the true problem lies in Ticketmaster. Prior to the sale of tickets, Ticketmaster attempted to handle the demand by making users register for a verification program. This program obviously proved to be very ineffective. Ticket master released an insincere apology and blamed bot attacks for the disaster.
Swift also released an apology stating:
“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.“
– Taylor Swift
What proved to be even more devastating was the resale that occurred through Ticketmaster and other companies following the original sale. Prices for some seats reached over $30,000. I even recall seeing seats that were behind the stage selling for $1,500. Other female artists such as Beyoncé and P!nk had tours this summer with ticket prices averaging around $500 per seat. Ticketmaster profits further off these sales by adding hidden fees that users are unaware of until checkout.
When tickets to a concert are surpassing the average annual household income in the U.S., there is a major problem at hand. To even the wealthiest of Americans, $1,000 for a single concert ticket is absurd. There two major issues in the ticket sales industry that are to blame.
The first obviously being Ticketmaster. Back in 2010 the two companies Live Nation (event promoter and venue operator) and Ticketmaster (ticket sales) merged to form a monopoly. Together, they now control 70% of the ticketing and live events venues market. The merge allowed for both companies to forbid each other from using the others service. This almost completely prevents any other company from holding live events or selling tickets.
While Ticketmaster has been under investigation for breaking numerous anti-monopoly laws, little has actually been done to prevent the monopoly that exists.
“If we made monopolies illegal on the basis of pricing above cost and generating monopoly profits for a firm, the concern would be that that would potentially stifle risk-taking and entrepreneurial activity”
– Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute.
I believe that this quote exposes a major flaw in our capitalist society. Companies are able to completely control markets as well as increase prices with little to no repercussions because those in power fear change.
The other issue at hand is Ticketmasters inability to prevent bots from swooping in and purchasing tickets in an attempt to resell the tickets at a much higher price. While it is hard to point to who is running these bots, it is easy to assume that there are large organizations behind the scenes. One individual, Ken Lowson, admitted to making $2.3 million off ticket bots.
The sad truth is that the victims behind Ticketmaster’s monopoly and bot organizations are primarily women. Ticketmaster takes advantage of the mass popularity of female artists such as Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and P!nk in order to make profit. These artists also have a primarily female fan base. Ticketmaster and resellers are fully aware that they can take advantage of these women because they control the market.
To end on a more optimistic note, the publicity that was drawn from the Taylor Swift incident caused for many to file lawsuits against Ticketmaster. Additionally, President Joe Biden released a statement promising to ban the junk fees that companies like Ticketmaster use to profit. The state of California recently followed through with this statement, passing a law to ban junk fees. The future appears bright for an end to Ticketmasters monopoly. Moral of the story: don’t mess with Swifties.
ShoutOut! James Madison University 