Why Music Fans Despise Ticketmaster More than Ever

Music fans complaining about how hard tickets for in-demand tours are to acquire – and how expensive they are for those lucky enough to get them – is a tale as old as popular music. However, the amount of music fans who hate Ticketmaster seems to have exploded in the last year, thanks to massive snafus involving three hotly anticipated tours.

To understand how Ticketmaster got here, a quick barebones history lesson is in order. The company that would eventually become Ticketmaster was founded in 1976 in Phoenix, Arizona. The company grew exponentially in the 1980s/1990s/2000s, becoming the industry leader in ticket sales operations while courting controversy for their  allegedly anti-competitive business practices, including a highly publicized boycott of venues that used Ticketmaster by Pearl Jam in the 1990s.

Things too a turn in 2010 when Ticketmaster merged with their chief competitor LiveNation, creating a massive company entitled Live Nation Entertainment, which controlled the vast majorities of venues in the United States and many alleged would be a monopoly. In fact, the government ruled that the only way the merger would be allowed would be if the company would be subject to “provisions for 10 years (later expanded to 15) that prevented it from retaliating against venues that partnered with competing ticketing firms.”

Over the following decade, Live Nation/Ticketmaster became an industry-dominating behemoth, responsible for a vast majority of ticket sales in the United States. However the company has come under dire numerous times for issues including but not limited to:

-High processing and facilities fees attached to tickets.

-Allegations that Ticketmaster purposely holds back tickets to then resale for exorbitant prices on the secondary market.

-The company’s “verified fan” program, which was touted as a way for “real” fans to sign up for pre-sales to beat out scalpers, but which often seems to malfunction.

-The company’s dynamic pricing strategy, which eliminates face value prices on tickets and instead raises and lowers them based on demand, meaning high-demand on-sales shows can often featuring expansive fluctuating prices.

These issues built throughout the 2010s, and were exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic, e before finally coming to a head in 2022 thanks to issues surrounding the three major tours. The first came in July of 2022 when tickets went on sale for Bruce Springsteen’s 2023 tour – the Hall of Famer’s first rock tour with the E Street Band in 6 years – and fans were met with crashing waiting rooms and dynamically-priced tickets that cost thousands of dollars for seats all over the arena. The Boss’s fans were aghast, especially since Springsteen had long been seen as an avatar for the common man. Ticketmaster said in a statement at the tine, “Prices and formats are consistent with industry standards for top performers.”

Several months after the Springsteen debacle, similar issues happened during the on-sale for pop punk band Blink-182’s 2023 thirtieth anniversary reunion. Bassist Mark Hoppus even acknowledged the issues, saying in the ensuing days that he had tried purchasing tickets himself “just to see what the experience was like” and that he “had tickets yoinked from my cart and the whole thing crash out.”

Hoppus went on to defend the band saying they “weren’t in charge of” dynamic pricing and that they were “trying to bring you the best possible show for the best price. This is a tour celebrating new music and the band getting back together. Thank you for your enthusiasm and I hope to see all of you at the shows.”

While the Bruce and Blink issues made headlines, neither of them hit the zeitgeist the way the disastrous on-sale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour did. The (to put it mildly) hotly anticipated tour saw millions of fans sign up for presale codes only to be met with frozen queues, broken servers, and high – though not dynamically – priced tickets, while while secondary market sites out thousands of tickets for the tour on sale. Things got so bad that the full public on-sale for the tour was cancelled. With an army of angry fans demanding answers, Swift released a statement that read in part:

“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. 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. 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.”

Ticketmaster responded with their own statement, saying “The biggest venues and artists turn to us because we have the leading ticketing technology in the world — that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and clearly for Taylor Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour’ on-sale it wasn’t. But we’re always working to improve the ticket buying experience. Especially for high demand on-sales, which continue to test new limits. We’re working to shore up our tech for the new bar that has been set by demand for the Taylor Swift ‘The Eras’ Tour. Once we get through that, if there are any next steps, updates will be shared accordingly.” They also claimed that “Less than 5% of the tickets for the tour have been sold or posted for resale on the secondary market” and that “On-sales that don’t use Verified Fan typically see 20-30% of inventory end up on secondary markets.”

Despite these defenses, countless fans – as well as elected officials including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called for investigations into the the company and its practices. It remains to be seen if Ticketmaster will face any tru consequences however.