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Ticketmaster has been sued by more Taylor Swift fans over the singer’s Eras Tour ticketing fiasco last month.
A further group of Swift fans have come together to sue Ticketmaster, after an original group of fans sued the ticketing platform earlier in December.
In November, those wanting to purchase Eras Tour tickets in the Verified Fan pre-sale witnessed crazy wait times, website outages and hyper-inflated prices on resale sites – including Ticketmaster’s own – before the sale started. With millions of fans attempting to buy tickets, Ticketmaster eventually cancelled the general onsale due to the debacle and low inventory.
Ticketmaster eventually said that the final 170,000 tickets would be sold through its Ticketstoday platform.
The second class action lawsuit was filed earlier this week.
According to Rolling Stone, the filing said: “Ticketmaster intentionally and purposefully misled millions of fans into believing it would prevent bots and scalpers from participating in the pre-sales.
“However, millions of fans were unable to purchase tickets during the TaylorSwiftTix Presale and the Capital One Presale, due in large part to unprecedented website traffic caused by Ticketmaster allowing 14 million unverified Ticketmaster users and a ‘staggering’ number of bots to participate in the pre-sales.”
The new lawsuit was filed by 26 plaintiffs and also alleged that Ticketmaster owner Live Nation engaged in “intentional misrepresentation”.
The filing added: “Millions of fans waited up to eight hours and were unable to purchase tickets. [The company] intentionally and purposefully mislead ticket purchasers by allowing scalpers and bots access to TaylorSwiftTix pre-sale.”
Other points made by the group included Ticketmaster’s willingness to provide codes when it was unable to satisfy ticket demand.
Ticketmaster’s failed attempt at handling the Taylor Swift ticketing pre-sale shone a spotlight on the dominance of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
US Senator Amy Klobuchar was among the senior figures to question Live Nation over the tactics used during the pre-sale. Senator Klobuchar and Senator Mike Lee, chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, also revealed that there would be a hearing.
In a recent interview with Variety, Klobuchar said that Live Nation president Michael Rapino provided some answers to the questions in her letter, and that Live Nation would be working alongside the Senators to get to the bottom of the issues.
Klobuchar said: “As they’ve said publicly, they should have done better on the Taylor Swift ticket sales. We know that, but we believe it’s not enough. I believe that we need to get to the bottom of the problems in the ticketing industry. That’s part of why we’re holding a hearing.”
The US Senator also highlighted the monopoly that Ticketmaster and Live Nation have on the live entertainment market in the country.
“People are starting to see the effects of these monopolies,” said Klobuchar. “Who would have guessed that Taylor Swift fans would be advocating for changes to antitrust laws? They’re the modern-day Grangers [the 19th century farmers movement pushing back against monopolies], and they are doing this on the internet.”
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