Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you probably have seen the country’s largest event ticketing company, Ticketmaster, become intertwined in a mess with the US Congress. How did it all start, though?
Many would name the beginning of this battle as the day Taylor Swift tickets went on sale back in November 2022. In summary, Ticketmaster crashed on sale day and many deserving fans weren’t able to secure tickets, sparking legal action from Taylor herself and further putting the company under watch. But this history goes much deeper than that chaotic day in November – so that’s why I’m here to present a general description of how it all went down (for my fellow fans out there).
I am going to highlight a couple events that I believe were just as horrendous as the Taylor Swift eras ticketing disaster, but went extremely unnoticed. Because, believe it or not, this has been happening for years, and I have some personal experience with being heartbroken by Ticketmaster.
Harry Styles’ Love On tour
Harry Styles is notoriously in the headlines alongside Ticketmaster for the company’s “Verified Fan Presale” method, its motto being to “make sure tickets get into the hands of real fans.” Even with this so-called protection method, it’s only been shown for years that his tickets still fall into the hands of plenty of scalpers reselling the tickets for thousands of dollars.
While these scalpers easily access the tickets, Harry’s fans are left in the dark: waiting hours in Ticketmaster queues with no result, most fans even being waitlisted. And this wasn’t the end of the Verified Fan Presale – for some artists, the system proved to be more harmful than beneficial.
The BTS residencies
Then came the BTS stadium residencies in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The way their presale worked was that fans with the “ARMY Membership”’ for $20 a month would go first, then Ticketmaster’s Verified Fans, then the general sale. I thought I had a chance with this one even without the membership, but I thought wrong.
For both residencies, within seconds, every single ticket on the market was sold out, most of them still going to scalpers with stadium memberships. Ticketmaster knew the demand of these tickets was going to be astronomical, but let their system deny presale IDs and allowed all 250,000+ tickets to sell out. Many fans angrily gathered in Ticketmaster’s social media comments to describe how they waited in the queue and got to checkout for VIP tickets just for the site to glitch completely and send them into another hour-long queue.
I personally remember this day so well – the disappointment of not having the ARMY membership, yet still holding onto hope that there would be tickets left – just for every seat to sell out so quickly. What makes it worse is that Ticketmaster preached the idea of every ticket going to ‘real fans,’ but the next day I saw a BTS VIP ticket going for $40,000 – yes, you read that right…
Bad Bunny, Mexico City
Last but definitely not least comes the Bad Bunny fiasco in Mexico last year, right around the time of the Taylor Swift situation. And the two ticketing events were very similar in the idea that they both failed due to a system crash (why is it that the number one ticketing company can’t seem to handle its own servers?). With Taylor, it happened as fans were trying their luck at presale, Ticketmaster saying that they weren’t prepared for their system to allow more than the original 1.5 million presale code holders on the site.
But the Bad Bunny situation was a nightmare that no concert-goer ever wants to encounter. Thousands of fans bought tickets for his record-breaking Mexico City concert with little issue – only for their tickets to be denied the day of the concert.
Their very real tickets bought from Ticketmaster were rejected as ‘fakes,’ leaving thousands of empty spots on the stadium floor that were supposed to be sold out. The fans were left to stand outside the venue to hear their favorite artist sing from the inside, their entire night ruined by a malfunction on the website.
SO, WHERE DOES ALL OF THAT LEAVE FANS?
What this all comes down to is that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, promoting tours and representing most ticket sales nationwide while at the same time taking advantage of fans trying to enjoy their favorite artists. They’ve avoided government attention for so long, but thanks to Taylor Swift, change may be on the horizon. With unrealistic fees, unkept promises, and servers that clearly can’t handle the power of fandoms, Ticketmaster has proven that it doesn’t live up to its #1 title; instead, it’s just a disguise for scammers both inside the company and outside.
For all my concert-lovers out there, may the best of luck be with you when trying to secure your seats for this upcoming season. And in the words of the US Senate… We’re watching.