Earlier this week, Taylor Swift's "The Eras Tour" ticket presale launched - prompting Swifties all over the country to flock to Ticketmaster's website in hopes of seeing the music icon on her career-spanning tour.
Going in, fans were prepared to brave long virtual queues just to score their desired tickets for the 57-date tour. However, they were faced with the unimaginable countless website crashes, exorbitant ticket prices, and errors in purchases.
The presale saw patient Swifties melting down on Twitter and on TikTok, expressing their disappointment with the system and the ticketing giant for the ruckus it has caused.
Reports have emerged that fans have to go through 8-hour queues but still leave empty-handed because of the errors and crashes on the website.
Scammers have also taken the chance to swindle hopeful fans. Some scalpers and resellers have already priced floor tickets for a whopping $24,000, initially priced at $300 - $800.
Democratic House of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed Live Nation and Ticketmaster for the monopoly and merger that has shortchanged the public in purchasing tickets like these.
"Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it's merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned [sic] in," AOC tweeted. "Break them up."
This was not the first time that these issues had emerged. Actually, the merger was called out earlier this year by New Jersey Senator James Skoufis after the expensive ticket prices on Bruce Springsteen's Arena tour.
READ ALSO: Taylor Swift' The Eras' Tour Ticket Scam? Resell Tickets Priced Up to $24,000!
"They are a monopoly. That comes with all of the standard problems that are associated with monopolies, not the least of which is there is not a healthy competitive market," Skoufis told Rolling Stone.
US Senator Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, has already written to Ticketmaster about the issue, raising important concerns and echoing Skoufis, AOC, and the public's concerns. (via Variety)
Meanwhile, Liberty Media CEO and Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei revealed that the team only anticipated 1.5 million Taylor Swift fans, only to be shocked by 14 million people waiting in line.
Liberty Media CEO and Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei responds to the Taylor Swift ticket fiasco: “I apologize to all our fans. We are working hard on this.” https://t.co/C8ATt6B2Kn pic.twitter.com/4bePfAtdxz
— CNBC (@CNBC) November 17, 2022
"I apologize to all our fans. We are working hard on this," Maffei said.
Meanwhile, Ticketmaster explained that with the capacity that the site had amassed at the time, Taylor could have done the impossible.
"Based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)... that's a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years," the company said.
Per the ticketing giant, Taylor Swift set a new record for selling over 2 million tickets in a single day for any artist in the history of the company.
