The method of purchasing tickets has drastically changed since the days of standing in line outside the venue. Now, you can simply go on the internet and purchase tickets on Ticketmaster without even leaving your bed. Easy, right? Unfortunately, there have been repeated failures and mishaps by Ticketmaster that have raised public animosity toward the company. Due to extremely inflated prices, extra fees, overwhelming bots, scalping, and constant website crashes, the public has raised important questions regarding why Ticketmaster seems to be the only company that sells legitimate concert tickets.

Ticketmaster used to be a preponderant ticket site and in 2010, the company merged with Live Nation Entertainment, an event promoter and venue operator. The combined entertainment company now controlls most avenues of entertainment when it comes to booking tours, live events, and locations. This merger resulted in a domination of about 70% of the market, and businesses like StubHub and Seatgeek were downgraded as second choice for ticket releases. Companies and independent sellers have begun buying tickets in mass from Ticketmaster before purchase days so they can attempt to compete, but this has created a low supply for the actual ticket release days.

The public became more aware of this issue when Taylor Swift announced a long-awaited stadium tour for this spring and summer. On the day tickets went live, Ticketmaster was unable to handle the website traffic and glitched out. Even those who did get tickets were alarmed by the average $2,000 ticket price. That’s a crazy amount of money for a live concert, so people took to social media platforms in outrage. Taylor Swift herself expressed concern about the prices and even fans or ‘Swifties’ wrote to their public officials about price gouging. The uproar led to the Senate investigating if Ticketmaster had become a monopoly.

A monopoly is an entity that controls most if not all of an industry, so there is little to no competition. These are dangerous to a capitalistic society like the United States because it relies on competition to drive the economic market. Due to the control that Ticketmaster has over ticket sales for events, citizens and politicians alike have pressured the US government to investigate. The government has the responsibility to regulate companies to avoid monopolies. If there is only one source for a product, major companies can price gouge and, ultimately, hurt the economy. They could even run the whole industry into the ground if the average person can no longer afford the exclusive product.

Taylor Swift is not the only artist whose tickets have seen exaggerated price increases; Drake, The Cure, and Bad Bunny are all debuting at extremely high prices. The Cure tried to combat the problem by making their tickets around $46, but Ticketmaster, in their own interest, tacked on fees that doubled the cost. Drake’s tickets range from $200 to upwards of $3,000. Inflated ticket prices have also led to artists avoiding stadium tours and returning to small, independent venues. For example, rapper Logic announced that his largest venue is 7,000 people and his most expensive VIP ticket is $400.

The only way there can be a change in the price gouging is if the government steps in to regulate the growing company. If it is determined to be a monopoly, then the only action to take is to dissolve it into smaller companies. This Ticketmaster debacle is just getting started and hopefully Live Nation Entertainment will be reigned in before they completely dominate the industry and become a monopoly.

Written by Lauren Lopez, Photographer: Lacey Loomis , Social Media: Angela Duplantis

The Ticketmaster Debacle