LOS ANGELES, United States —
Taylor Swift on
Friday lashed out at Ticketmaster over the botched sale of her upcoming tour,
saying it was “excruciating” to learn that thousands of her fans had struggled
to buy tickets.
اضافة اعلان
The US pop mega-star’s “The Eras Tour” was due to go
on public sale Friday. But after days of glitches and long waits for those
attempting to buy early pre-sale tickets, the public sale was abruptly canceled
on Thursday.
“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside
entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just
watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” Swift wrote on Instagram.
Without naming Ticketmaster directly, Swift said she
and her team had asked “them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of
demand and we were assured they could”.
“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got
tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went
through several bear attacks to get them,” she said.
Ticketmaster, a dominating force in the ticketing
industry, blamed “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and
insufficient remaining ticket inventory” for the public sale cancelation.
It cited a “staggering number of bot attacks” along
with fans without pre-sale codes trying to purchase early tickets — meaning
their site experienced 3.5 billion system requests, they said, four times the
company’s previous peak.
It was not immediately clear whether the sale would
be rescheduled, or how many unsold tickets remained. Ticketmaster did not
respond to an AFP request for clarification.
“The Eras Tour” marks Swift’s first time back on the
road since 2018’s “Reputation” tour.
The multiple Grammy-winner has promised fans it will
be “a journey through all of my musical eras of my career”.
The tour is set to kick off on March 17, 2023, in
Glendale, Arizona, with stops including Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, and five
final domestic shows in Los Angeles in early August.
International shows will be announced at a later
date.
‘Unchecked monopoly’
The American ticketing
industry, which the company Ticketmaster overwhelmingly dominates, has for
years left concertgoers frustrated by hidden fees, soaring costs, rampant
scalpers, and limited tickets due to presales.
The havoc over Swift’s tour has spurred comment from
a number of US lawmakers, including
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Richard
Blumenthal, who urged an investigation into the “state of competition in the
ticketing industry”.
In 2010, Ticketmaster merged with event promotion
behemoth Live Nation, creating what Congressman David Cicilline this week
dubbed “an unchecked monopoly”.
On Friday, the New York Times reported that the US
Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster’s
parent company.
The probe, focused on whether Live Nation
Entertainment has abused its power over the live music industry, predates the
botched sale of Swift’s tour, two people with knowledge of the matter told the
New York Times.
Neither the Justice Department nor Live Nation immediately
responded to AFP requests for comment.
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