Ticketing site issues headline controversy in Senate, on campus

Article by Julian Sealy Graphic by Andrew Edwards

This past November, the ticket sales and distribution website Ticketmaster crashed while fans of superstar pop artist Taylor Swift were attempting to purchase presale tickets for her upcoming “Eras” tour. Ticketmaster attributed the crash to heavy site traffic, but many users claimed the problem was poor customer service. The company publicly apologized to Swift, but many fans were left ticketless as a large number of tickets were snatched up and used on resell websites.

Senior Erika Zavaleta was one of millions of Swift fans who was left ticketless.

“I know that there were three opportunities to get tickets and we tried two of them and then the third got canceled, so that was annoying.” Zavaleta said.

According to calculations by Bookies.com, fans have a 2% chance of getting general sale tickets at face value (1 in 50 shot). Odds improve to 5% (1 in 20 shot) if you have a pre-sale code.

Taylor Swift fans are not the only ones who have encountered problems with Ticketmaster. Superstar country artist Zach Bryan and fans have also expressed their dislike of the ticket- ing website. Bryan and fans took to Twitter to complain about ticket prices.

“If I could personally send a free hoodie to anyone who has ever used Ticketmaster I would,” Bryan said in a tweet on November 17. “[I] know everyone needs to rebuild their finances after Ticketmaster purchases.”

The controversial issue has also been taken to the Senate. In an article from ABC News, Senator Amy Klobuchar described Live Nation’s conduct with Ticketmaster as the definition of a monopoly -- which the company denied -- and said that American consumers suffer inflated ticket fees due to the lack of competition.

“The live event experience has become increasingly out of reach for so many fans,” Klobuchar said. “One GAO [Government Accountability Office] study found that 27% of the ticket price was the fees. A recent study found that for some tickets, it’s as high as 75% of face value.”

Zavaleta said how she thinks Ticketmaster could improve their ticket sales.

In addition to his long thread of tweets, Bryan also released his first live album titled “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster” live from Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

“I just think they should have made you put your [fan] code before you got in line instead of waiting to buy the tickets to get the code or to put in the code,” Zavaleta said. “Then, fewer people would have been in the line and they would have been able to actually have the people who had the code buy tickets.”