Taylor Swift Ends The Ticketing Monopoly

Taylor Swift fans protest on Capitol Hill after a disastrous presale. The fans, also known as “swifties'  were there to try to get Ticketmaster and Live Nation to break up as they believed they had a monopoly over live events. 

In 2010 Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged to become one company that owns most venues and can sell tickets for whatever price they want. Through this, the company has developed a monopoly on concerts and other live performances. They have introduced “official platinum seating” which allows them to inflate the price of tickets in the first six rows and “dynamic pricing” which allows them to raise the price based on demand while ignoring the artists and tour manager's requests.

This is not the first time Ticketmaster has been taken to the senate. In 1995 Pearl Jam took Ticketmaster to court over ticket prices and lost the case. The band tried to do their “Sponsored By No One” tour without selling any tickets through Ticketmaster because they wanted to be able to set their own prices. When they resumed the tour in 1998 they were back to working with Ticketmaster. 

This is the most significant Ticketmaster incident to date, and with Swifties being one of the biggest fan bases, they are demanding change. Ticketmaster allowed their tickets to be told to scalpers through their botched sales. On the resale site, TickPick the cheapest seat for Swift at MetLife stadium is $944 which have you seated behind the stage and the ticket prices go all the way up to $29,156.

While right now a breakup between the two companies seems unlikely there is still hope that they will lose their monopoly by 2025.