Taylor Swift fans are organising campaign against Ticketmaster after ticket controversy
Numerous Taylor Swift fans have joined forces to organise a campaign against Ticketmaster following the recent controversy surrounding the recent ‘Eras Tour’ sale.
Swift said in a statement last Friday (November 18) that Ticketmaster had “assured” her it was able to handle huge demand, but she acknowledged how some fans had “such a hard time trying to get tickets” for her 2023 North American dates.
It came after the company announced on Thursday (November 17) that the general ticket sale was cancelled, citing “extraordinarily high demand” and “insufficient remaining ticket inventory”.
Many customers had reported technical issues while attempting to purchase tickets via a pre-sale last Tuesday (November 15), including lengthy wait times and ongoing website outages.
Later, Ticketmaster posted an update in which the firm said there had been “historically unprecedented demand” as “millions” of Swift fans tried to secure tickets for ‘The Eras Tour’.
It has been reported that the United States Department of Justice is opening an anti-trust investigation into Live Nation – the company that owns Ticketmaster – while various US lawmakers have hit out at the aforementioned firms.
Since Swift’s statement on the matter, Ticketmaster has apologised to those who had a “terrible experience” navigating its website, writing: “We strive to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans.”
A reported 14million people attempted to access Ticketmaster for last week’s pre-sale, with 2.4million users eventually managing to buy tickets.
As Mashable reports, around 35 Swift fans – who are mostly lawyers – joined a group chat called ‘Vigilante Legal’ (a nod to the singer’s ‘Midnights’ song ‘Vigilante Shit’) over the course of 24 hours.
The thread was set up by Blake Barnett, a 30-year old-lawyer who ended up forking out $500 (£420) in fees for her group of friends’ tickets for one of Swift’s concerts in Chicago.
On November 16), Barnett shared the following tweet: “Calling all swiftie lawyers: lmk [let me know] if you wanna be added to a GC to brainstorm if there’s anything we can do to take action against @ticketmaster.”
In a later post, she confirmed that the group’s participants were “reporting Ticketmaster to the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] and drafting a brief to hopefully use to assist state [attorney generals] and politicians in taking them down”.
According to Mashable, the group is now a full-fledged limited liability company (LLC).
“Something needs to be done. They’re violating antitrust laws,” Barnett told the outlet. “The monopoly merger [in 2010] should have never been allowed to happen between Live Nation and Ticketmaster.”
The publication spoke to various other members of the group. Elizabeth Burg, 28, said she had been “radicalised” through her bad ticket-buying experience. On Twitter, Burg called on fans to sign a petition to “Tell the Department of Justice to Investigate Ticketmaster”.
Stephanie Aly, 33, officially launched the ‘Vigilante Legal’ campaign on her Swift fan site The Swifties.
calling all swiftie lawyers: lmk if you wanna be added to a GC to brainstorm if there’s anything we can do to take action against @ticketmaster
— blake is on her own
(@blakeerose13) November 16, 2022
A description on the website reads: “Vigilante Legal is uniting Swifties and fans of music everywhere to end the era of outrageous fees, hours-long queues to nowhere, glitchy processing and terrible customer service.
“There’s no fan base better suited to taking Ticketmaster down. We have a massive, engaged online community; our collective power has the potential to effect real change across the music industry if we work together to make it happen.”
Among the Democratic politicians to have hit out at Ticketmaster and Live Nation is New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in,” she tweeted. “Break them up.”
In 2010, Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged to form Live Nation Entertainment. At the time the Justice Department accepted the merger, but amended the deal in 2019 due to violations of the original deal (Billboard).
Live Nation Entertainment currently dominates approximately 70 per cent of the live music industry
Meanwhile, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has launched an investigation into Ticketmaster in light of the saga.
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Tom Skinner
NME
