The Taylor Swift tour drama continues as fans are now suing Live Nation Entertainment for breach of contract and fraud following the presale fiasco for her “Eras Tour” tickets.
News of the Ticketmaster website crashing and fans waiting hours to secure tickets they pre-registered for made headlines following the presale event on November 15 and 16. The general sale scheduled for November 18 wound up getting canceled due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticket systems” and “insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”
Now fans are coming together to sue Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, for the events that unfolded, per NBC News.
The plaintiffs accuse the company of breach of contract, intentional misrepresentation, fraud, fraudulent inducement, and antitrust violations. They are seeking a penalty of $2,500 against Ticketmaster for every violation of the Business and Professions Code, section 17200, NBC noted.
“Based on information and belief, Ticketmaster has effectuated this anticompetitive scheme by forcing fans of musicians to exclusively use Ticketmaster for presale and sales prices, which are above what a competitive market price would be,” the lawsuit says.
“Ticketmaster has also forced attendees to exclusively use Ticketmaster’s ‘Secondary Ticket Exchange’—i.e., the platform Ticketmaster operates for the resale of concert tickets.”
Plaintiffs also accuse Ticketmaster of “intentionally and purposefully” tricking customers by allowing “scalpers and bots” to attain codes for the presale. They further allege that the company was fully aware the general sale would be canceled due to demand.
“We believe that both Taylor Swift and her fans were hurt by Ticketmaster,” attorney Jennifer Kinder said in a statement, per NBC. “Ticketmaster messed with the wrong fan base.”
Meanwhile, Ticketmaster had previously stated that it did not anticipate the demand for “Eras Tour” tickets. The company said that 3.5 million fans pre-registered for the Verified Fan program, the largest registration in its history, and that 2.4 million tickets were sold in the presale.
“Even when a high demand on sale goes flawlessly from a tech perspective, many fans are left empty handed,” the company said. “For example: based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)… that’s a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years.”
Swift also addressed the situation, sympathizing with fans who wanted tickets but could not get them.
“Well it goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” the “Anti-Hero” singer shared. “We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do.”
“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” she continued. “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,” Swift concluded. “And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs.”
