Swift’s first public comments about the chaotic ticket sales came on the same day that the New York Times reported on a US Justice Department antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster’s parent company. The investigation, which precedes Swift’s controversy, is looking into whether Live Nation Entertainment has abused its power in the multibillion-dollar live entertainment industry. That power came into focus this week as record demand for Swift’s 2023 tour, her first in five years, crashed the company’s website, left customers queuing for “pre-sale” tickets for hours and led to its cancellation of its public sale scheduled for Friday. . In a statement posted to her Instagram Stories, the 32-year-old singer said she asked Ticketmaster “multiple times if they could handle this kind of demand and we were sure they could.” Her full statement began: “Well. It goes without saying that I am extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career home. I did this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fan experience by doing it myself with my team who care about my fans as much as I do,” he wrote. “It’s really hard for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalty, and it’s excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen without any recourse. “There are many reasons why people have had such a hard time getting tickets and I’m trying to understand how this situation can be improved moving forward. “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them many times if they could handle this kind of demand and they assured us that they could. It’s really amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it pisses me off that so many of them feel like they went through a lot of bear attacks to get them. “And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that I hope to give more opportunities for us all to come together and sing these songs. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.” Ticketmaster parent Live Nation blamed “historically unprecedented demand” for Swift’s 52-date US tour for sales’ descent into chaos this week. Fans looking for tickets had about two weeks to sign up for Ticketmaster’s “verified fans” program, which is supposed to weed out bots and scalpers and get tickets into the hands of real fans. On Tuesday, many with presale codes were left empty-handed when the site crashed or left them queuing for hours. there were reports of people rearranging their pre-sale schedules only to be locked out until a scheduled public sale scheduled for November 18, which was then canceled the day before due to “insufficient ticket stock”. Tickets were already being resold on sites like StubHub for up to $22,000. Delays, high resale prices, website failures and the eventual cancellation of the public sale led to outrage and renewed public scrutiny of Ticketmaster, which merged with Live Nation in 2010. In a letter to Live Nation Entertainment Inc, Amy Klobuchar, the chairwoman of the Senate Antitrust Committee, expressed “grave concern about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful effects on consumers.” Tennessee’s attorney general has announced a consumer protection investigation into the California-based entertainment company after his office was flooded with complaints from Swift fans. “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, their merger with Live Nation should never have been approved and they must rule [sic] inside,” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in outrage at the debacle that erupted online. “They must break up.” In 2021, five Democratic House representatives sent a letter asking the justice department to look into Ticketmaster and Live Nation for possible antitrust violations. The letter claimed that Ticketmaster “has stifled competition in live entertainment ticketing and harmed consumers and should be reviewed.”
