Sen. Amy Klobuchar Confirms Congressional Antitrust Hearing Following Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift Fiasco – Update

TO UPDATE: Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is moving forward with her plans to hold a U.S. Senate Antitrust Committee hearing on the lack of competition in the ticketing industry. Public outrage over the issue has peaked in recent days following the fiasco of Ticketmaster’s chaotic handling of the upcoming Taylor Swift tour.

“The high fees, site outages and cancellations customers are experiencing show that Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company is not under pressure to constantly innovate and improve,” Antitrust Committee Chairman Klobuchar said in a statement Tuesday. . “We will hold a hearing on how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industry is hurting both customers and performers.”

According to Reuters, neither Klobuchar nor Republican panel member Mike Lee announced a hearing or indicated possible witnesses.

Ticketmaster responded in a statement that it remained bound by a 2010 consent order with the Department of Justice, saying the company’s dominance of the industry was due to its “quality.”

“Ticketmaster holds a significant share of the primary ticketing services market due to the large gap that exists between the quality of the Ticketmaster system and the next best primary ticketing system,” the company said in a statement.

Earlier this week, Klobuchar was among the lawmakers who called for the dissolution of Ticketmaster and owner Live Nation Entertainment if a Justice Department investigation found wrongdoing.

PREVIOUS November 19: Ticketmaster feels the pain of little Susie, the corporate giant said on Friday.

The ducat company issued a statement on Friday apologizing for the technical glitch that prevented fans from purchasing coveted seats on Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour.”

“We want to make ticketing for fans as easy as possible, but this has been the case with many people trying to get tickets for Taylor Swift | for sale, not the case The Epoch Tour. First of all, we want to apologize to Taylor and all her fans, especially those who had a terrible experience buying tickets.”

Swift herself lent her voice to the chorus of outrage, along with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). It was also revealed that the US Department of Justice was already investigating Ticketmaster before this latest incident.

Ticketmaster claims they did not anticipate the demand. Members of Swift’s Verified Fan program were the first to access the seats and were given a special code to gain access.

However, the overwhelming number of fans pouring in on the opening day of the presale “disturbed the predictability and reliability that are the hallmarks of our verified fan platform.”

The company said this led to the cancellation of the planned IPO because there was “not enough card stock”.

Friday’s statement ended on a somber promise. “We are working on upgrading our technology for the new bar set due to the demand for Taylor Swift | to reinforce The Epoch Tour. Once we are done with that, updates will be shared accordingly if there are further steps.

Swift was enraged by the whole experience. “I will not apologize to anyone because we have asked them several times if they can meet this type of request and we were confident that they could,” Swift wrote on Instagram. “It’s really amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through multiple bear attacks to get them.”

Senator Klobuchar sent a letter to Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation and CEO Michael Rapino. In it, she raised antitrust concerns about what she describes as a lack of competition in the live music industry, a complaint often made against Ticketmaster, which is usually the only way to get tickets to an event otherwise than to appear at one in person Cash . .

“Ticketmaster is the story of a monopoly that has been torn apart. They are a vertically integrated giant with Live Nation capable of raising prices and providing inferior service. So we will have a bipartisan Senate hearing on these issues so that we can push for solutions. ”

The company resisted the idea that anyone could be accommodated for a popular event.

“Even if a high-demand sale goes smoothly from a technical standpoint, many fans leave empty-handed,” the Ticketmaster statement said. “Based on the traffic to our website, for example, Taylor would have to do over 900 stadium shows (almost 20 times her shows) … that’s a stadium show every night for the next 2.5 years. Although that’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know there’s more we can do to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on.”