The Hill: How A Taylor Swift Tour Thrust Antitrust Concerns Into The Spotlight

November 19, 2022 Media

Taylor Swift fans have bad blood with Ticketmaster after the platform canceled the general sale for the pop star’s upcoming tour following a chaotic presale this week, bringing new light to an issue that supporters of antitrust reform already knew all too well.

Critics have been warning against the company’s dominance since merging with Live Nation in 2010, and the latest fiasco with Swift’s upcoming tour, which sparked outrage among her massive fan base, gave ammunition to lawmakers trying to revamp antitrust laws to pile on the pressure.

Although Ticketmaster said the issues were due to the high demand, however, advocates for antitrust reform say that the company is the problem.

“Because they have very little competition, [Ticketmaster] doesn’t feel pressured to invest in their product at all,” said Krista Brown, a senior policy analyst at the anti-monopoly nonprofit American Economic Liberties Project.

That purported lack of competition leads to website crashes and higher prices and fees for customers, Brown said.

“They really are not afraid of losing the fan base, because the fan base doesn’t have somewhere else to turn,” Brown added.

The swell of pushback from Swift’s fans, though, could help ramp up pressure, Brown said.

“It has kind of been an antitrust crash course for all the Taylor Swift Fans, which obviously there are many,” she said.

“Public pressure actually matters, and that’s something that often times gets overlooked.”