Earlier this week, tickets for Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated The Eras Tour went on sale. That did not go well. Due to “historically unprecedented demand” (as Ticketmaster put it), many fans were either left waiting for hours to buy tickets or were unable to secure any at all due to issues with the Ticketmaster platform. As one clever fan joked, “It’s called the ‘Eras’ tour because if you try to log in to Ticketmaster all you get are era messages.”
The situation has even become a political matter. US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded by criticizing Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s merger as monopolistic. Now, Tennessee attorney general Jonathan Skrmetti has some thoughts, too.
In a news conference on November 16 (as The Tennessean reports), Skrmetti expressed concern about potential violations of consumer protection laws by Ticketmaster, saying, “We have received complaints, we are concerned about this very dominant market player, and we want to make sure that they’re treating consumers right and people are receiving fair opportunity to purchase the tickets that clearly matter a great deal to them.”
He also noted, “Consumers were given presale codes to purchase tickets, and we need to look into exactly what was promised and whether that was provided. […] We’re in Music City here in Nashville. This is an important part of the local economy. It’s not just a matter of fans who are being harmed by this potentially. There are a lot of people involved in concert production in this area. […] There are different [attorney generals] with different bandwidths and with different opportunities. The company has been subjected to numerous complaints going back decades. And there may be other people who are interested in this, if there’s something to be interested in.”
