Is Ticketmaster a Monopoly?

“There’s no nice way to tell ten million Swifties, ‘There are no tickets,’” stated Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, one day after Ticketmaster’s failure to deliver Taylor Swift tickets to The Eras Tour.   

On social media, fans reported that they spent hours, sometimes days, stuck in queues for tickets that they had pre-registered to access. 

Swift only sold her tickets through Ticketmaster, and only those with CapitalOne cards were able to access the tickets earlier during the pre-sale. Furthermore, her tickets were priced at extreme heights. When many Swifties went in to buy tickets, they found that some of the cheapest ones were $12,000, with some going as high as $22,000, according to Music In Minnesota. This is a result of Ticketmaster adding more sales tax and fees to Swift’s original pricing. 

In the end, Ticketmaster announced later that week that the general sale had been canceled, leaving millions without any opportunity to purchase tickets, as had been promised earlier by Taylor Swift and Ticketmaster itself. They announced that “Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour has been canceled."

Because of the commotion and anger from the fans who did not get tickets for The Eras Tour, the Department of Justice has launched an investigation on anti-trust laws regarding Live Nation and Ticketmaster, according to CBS News. The Department of Justice’s investigation is mainly focused on Ticketmaster’s mishandling of ticket sales during the Eras Tour pre-sale. 

Similar to Taylor Swift’s situation, Ticketmaster has also been portrayed as a “monopoly” from many other artists, such as Springsteen, Harry Styles, and Taylor Swift. Ultimately, Ticketmaster balloons the prices of these tickets, putting more money in the pockets of these artists; the third party (Ticketmaster) is making almost as much money on ticket sales through fees as the artists are themselves. 

By definition, a monopoly is “when one company and its product dominate[s] an entire industry whereby there is little to no competition and consumers must purchase that specific good or service from the one company” (Investopedia). 

However, many other ticket-selling companies have also become monopolies, but not to the extent at which Ticketmaster has. While many artists use Ticketmaster as their source to sell tickets, Ticketmaster has inflated the prices, causing fans to pay more than what the artist initially wanted as a ticket price. 

Ultimately, Ticketmaster is a monopoly, as many fans are forced to pay higher prices, and many are also unable to get tickets. 

Although Ticketmaster is gaining thousands of dollars from this monopoly, music fans across the country are losing their chance to see their favorite artists.  

BY SEJAL MAMMAI

Lex Perspectives