Earlier this week, the public on-sale for Swift’s 2023 The Eras Tour was canceled due to unprecedented demand that caused Ticketmaster to crash, leaving fans outraged. Yesterday (November 18), Swift weighed in through a post on her Instagram story, saying that it was “excruciating” to watch fans struggle to get tickets for her tour.
“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,” she wrote. “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.”
Now, Ticketmaster has issued an apology on their website. As Variety points out, much of the statement is identical to the one company had published and then deleted on Thursday, which further irritated fans due to its lack of apologetic language. (The original version can be found in this Music Business Worldwide story). The lengthy statement now begins by apologizing “to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets.” It then goes on to cite several statistics to explain why its system failed.
“The biggest venues and artists turn to us because we have the leading ticketing technology in the world – that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and clearly for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour onsale it wasn’t,” Ticketmaster explained. “But we’re always working to improve the ticket buying experience. Especially for high demand onsales, which continue to test new limits.”
It concluded: “Even when a high demand onsale goes flawlessly from a tech perspective, many fans are left empty handed. For example: 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. While it’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on.”
Last night, it was reported the United States Department of Justice was opening an anti-trust investigation into Live Nation, the company that owns Ticketmaster. According to The New York Times, the investigation is “focused on whether Live Nation Entertainment abused its power over the multibillion-dollar live music industry.” They also reported that the antitrust division of the Justice Department has “contancted music venues and players in the ticket market, asking about Live Nation’s practices and the wider dynamics of the industry” in an effort to determine “whether the company maintains a monopoly over the industry.”
We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets. We feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened: https://t.co/1Gn4kRIvq8
— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) November 19, 2022
