Taylor Swift fans promised to revolt after the viral Ticketmaster Eras Tour disaster last month. Now, Swifties are on their vigilante shit. Per documents obtained by Deadline, 26 plaintiffs from 13 states are taking the ticket seller’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, to court for violating the Cartwright Act and Unfair Competition Law. Filed in Los Angeles on Friday, the lawsuit specifically cites instances of fraud, price fixing, antitrust violations, and “intentional misrepresentation.” The plaintiffs are seeking a civil fine of $2,500 per violation, plus attorneys’ fees and any court-ordered additional relief.
According to Rolling Stone, the suit alleges that “millions of fans waited up to eight hours and were unable to purchase tickets” because Ticketmaster “intentionally and purposefully” misled ticket purchasers “by allowing scalpers and bots access to TaylorSwiftTix presale.” Accusers claimed the company knowingly provided codes “when it could not satisfy ticket demand,” and the plaintiffs took further issue with Ticketmaster’s participation in the ticket resale market as well as the company’s dealings with stadiums. These agreements reportedly forced fans to buy more expensive tickets and allowed Ticketmaster to make additional money “every time” the tickets were resold.
During the two-day debacle, which began November 15, many fans who received presale codes from the Ticketmaster registration lottery left empty-handed after waiting for hours in online queues. Even those who were lucky enough to reach the final stages of purchasing were ultimately unable to purchase tickets due to glitches, high-speed purchasers, and “dynamic pricing,” which fans claim is Ticketmaster’s euphemism for price gouging.
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Ultimately, on November 18, Ticketmaster canceled the general sale that was supposed to follow the presale “due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.” Taylor Swift subsequently condemned the ticket sales company in a statement shared on her Instagram Stories, saying she would not “make excuses” for the platform.
“It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” the 11-time Grammy winner wrote. “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 in loyalties and excruciating for me to watch mistakes happen with no recourse.
“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,” Swift continued. “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.”
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