Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticketing service company, has a monopoly on concert ticket sales. Since Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010, they have become exponentially larger than competitors and taken control of the ticketing industry. The website powers ticket sales for venues such as stadiums, arenas, and performing arts centers with a worldwide reach. According to the Ticketmaster website, the company was started in 1976 as a way for colleges to sell tickets to events on campus. Now in 2023 they have evolved into a global powerhouse, controlling both the ticket selling and reselling industries, while making a large profit with their service fees and private investing relationships. Entertainers have recently become infuriated at Ticketmaster’s monopoly on the entertainment industry, specifically their website’s failure to meet demands and restrictions on purchasing that can leave loyal fans ticketless.
Here is a brief history of Ticketmaster: the company was started as a small software company that “licensed ticketing systems to retail outlets and universities to sell paper tickets to event-goers” (Ticketmaster). Ticketmaster would make their profits by selling their system to vendors and a service charge to consumers. By 2009, the then leading ticket sales company, Front Line Management (now Live Nation) announced a merger with Ticketmaster, and the two companies together became a monopoly over the entertainment industry. Now, in order to purchase a ticket to nearly any event, consumers must purchase tickets through Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster recently launched their Verified Fan program, where fans must register to participate prior to an event’s ticket sale, and if they are selected, they will be sent a code and allowed presale access to the event.
Most recently, in November of 2022, Ticketmaster made headlines after their site crashed during their Verified Fan Presale event for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour. Over 3.5 million fans registered for Verified Fan Presale, which is the largest registration in the company’s history. Ironically enough, Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program was designed to help the company manage the demand during large ticket sales, as well as limit the number of robots attempting to buy tickets. This intention proved the opposite on November 15th, as the Ticketmaster website crashed due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand” (Ticketmaster). Over 2.4 million tickets were sold to Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, the highest number of tickets sold on Ticketmaster in a single day. Due to the website crash and the inability of Ticketmaster to meet the overwhelming demand, the company ended up canceling the public sale three days later. This means that Swifties who were left ticketless are left to resale options on sites such as Vivid Seats and Seat Geek, where ticket prices reach over $30,000.
Swift issued a statement in response to the fiasco saying, “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could,” (Swift, Instagram). Taylor Swift is not the only artist upset by Ticketmaster’s monopoly over the ticketing industry, with country artist Zach Bryan also taking a stance with his recent entitlement of his live album: “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster.” Along with this live album release, Bryan issued a statement saying, “I am so tired of people saying things can’t be done about this massive issue while huge monopolies [Ticketmaster] sit there stealing money from working-class people.” This statement follows Bryan’s recent tour, with his fans paying upwards of $400 for tickets after service fees when Bryan intentionally priced the face values substantially lower.
While many artists are becoming upset over the monopoly that Ticketmaster has obtained, it does not seem like the site will be going anywhere any time soon. Ticketmaster continues to be the one-stop shop for all things ticketing, and they are quite successful with their control over the industry, even if fans are left either ticketless or with empty wallets.