Garth Brooks

Garth Brooks Defends Ticketmaster’s Response to Taylor Swift Chaos

Ticketmaster has been feeling scrutiny from customers, performers, and government officials after Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour pre-sale event turned into chaos. But at least one major star is defending the company, Garth Brooks.

The company became the subject of a U.S. Senate hearing last week. Complaints about the ticketing industry had been coming in for years, but when Swift fans sat in virtual queues for hours and were ultimately denied a chance to buy tickets, the situation hit a boiling point.

Garth Brooks penned an open letter, which was obtained by Reuters, to the United States Congress explaining his take. He assumes Ticketmaster handled the Taylor Swift issues appropriately based on his own experiences with the company. And he believes the real problem with the industry begins and possibly ends with scalping.

In the letter, the two-time Grammy winner shared that he and Ticketmaster have enjoyed a long-standing professional partnership. Over the years, the individuals who work within the company have treated him with unending respect, and he’s had the privilege of experiencing Ticketmaster’s inner workings, both good and bad.

“Any program will shut down or freeze if too much demand is put on the system,” he wrote. “We learned this a few times. And when it happens, there are some things that are not in your control.”

“But how you respond to anything is always in your control. Ticketmaster has responded in an appropriate way for all of our situations,” he added. “And what I learned is, it is as much up to me as the artist to protect the people who have made me an artist when it comes to how much demand I put on a ticketing system.”

Garth Brooks Asks Congress ‘Why Don’t We Just Make Scalping Illegal?’

Garth Brooks didn’t say that the industry is without its problems, however. So he took a segue in the letter to share what he thinks could help—make scalping illegal. The issue is something that the country music star has been speaking about for years.

“The crush of bots during an on-sale is a huge reason for program failure NO MATTER WHO THE TICKET SELLING COMPANY is,” he continued. “And the one who ALWAYS pays for this atrocity is the customer, the last one on whom the burden should fall.”

“Making scalping illegal eliminates bots, eliminates dynamic pricing controversies, puts less pressure on the system because it puts everyone on a level playing field,” he noted.