Justice Department Reportedly Investigating Taylor Swift Ticketmaster Fiasco

The DOJ is investigating Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, for its snafu regarding ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour. The company, which received scorn from Swifties worldwide, recently sparked pandemonium when it mishandled ticket sales. 

However, the investigation began long before the ticket sale debacle event began. According to reports, DOJ officials will investigate whether Live Nation is abusing its market dominance in the ticket industry. 

Earlier this week, Ticketmaster became the bane of existence for many fans when the site crashed during a presale event. Fans waited hours only to be left empty-handed after the site crashed.

According to The New York Times, the Justice Department recently contacted music venues and participants in the industry to learn more about Live Nation’s practices. 

In addition, the DOJ focused its efforts on whether the company has a monopoly over the ticket industry. 

The recent ticket-sales catastrophe has since sparked calls for more restrictions on the company. Several officials also called for an inquiry into Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

After the site went down, Ticketmaster canceled Friday’s ticket sales for Swift’s highly-anticipated tour. 

“Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been canceled,” the company tweeted at the time. 

Taylor Swift condemns Ticketmaster’s mishandling of sales, calls it ‘excruciating’ to watch

As for the pop singer herself, Swift spoke out Friday about the fiasco that left her fans extraordinarily disappointed.

“It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” she wrote on Instagram on Friday. “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 also criticized Ticketmaster for the mistake. She said there was a “multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time” getting tickets.

“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.”

She also said she wanted to try to “figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward.”

However, the blunder first began on Tuesday. At the time, the site’s sale began for “verified fans,” a tactic that gives presale codes to individuals rather than bots. 

The company created the “verified fan” mechanism in 2017 to help it handle situations of high demand. Still, as more than 3.5 million people pre-registered to be Swift “verified fans,” the system couldn’t handle the requests. Ticketmaster says that’s the largest registration in the company’s history.