‘TAYLOR’-MADE
Pols use her words in tix fiasco grill
Members of Congress revealed themselves as Swifties during Tuesday’s hearing, quoting from their favorite songs:
May I suggest, respectfully, that Ticketmaster ought to look in the mirror and say, “I’m the problem. It’s me.” — Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)
Senators sounded like “Swifties” Tuesday, quoting pop star Taylor Swift in questioning the company that owns Ticketmaster about the botched sale of tickets to the pop star’s Eras Tour last fall.
Pols, left and right, used lyrics and song titles at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Ticketmaster’s 2010 merger with LiveNation and whether it created a monopoly resulting in unfairly high prices for concertgoers.
“I believe in capitalism, and to have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
“You can’t have too much consolidation — something that unfortunately for this country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know ‘All Too Well,’” she said, in a nod to Swift’s 2012 hit.
Site crash
Matters came to a head this past November when Ticketmaster’s site crashed during a presale for Swift tickets. The company blamed devoted fans and online bot attacks for overwhelming its servers and causing would-be concertgoers to lose tickets after waiting for hours in a virtual queue.
Ticketmaster later canceled the general ticket sale due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.” The company had required fans to register for the presale, and more than 3.5 million people did, a company record.
“While the bots failed to penetrate our systems or acquire any tickets, the attack required us to slow down and even pause our sales,” LiveNation CEO Joe Berchtold claimed Tuesday.
“This is what led to a terrible consumer experience, which we deeply regret. We apologize to the fans. We apologize to Miss Swift. We need to do better, and we will do better.”
Berchtold denied that Ticketmaster unfairly blocks competition and bloats ticket prices.
Scalpers blamed
“We hear people say that ticketing markets are less competitive today than they were at the time of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger. That’s simply not true,” he said. “There are problems in the ticketing industry . . . many are the direct result of industrial-scale ticket scalping that goes on today —a $5 billion industry on concerts alone in the United States, fueled by practices that run counter to the interests of artists and their fans.”
But Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) blasted the company’s practices as “a massive monopolistic mess.”
“May I suggest, respectfully, that Ticketmaster ought to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m the problem. It’s me,’ ” he added quoting Swift’s 2022 hit song “Anti-hero.”
Some lawmakers, including Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), suggested capping ticket prices or banning consumers from transferring their tickets to other people. “Not every kid can afford $500 to go see Taylor Swift,” Kennedy said.
But Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) argued a ban on transferable tickets would hurt consumers.
A ban, said Lee, quoting Swift’s 1989 song “Blank Space”: “I think it’s ‘a nightmare dressed like a daydream.’ ”
A lot of people seem to think that’s somehow a solution; I think it’s “a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”
— Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), about a ban on transferable tickets
You can’t have too much consolidation – something that unfortunately for this country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know “All Too Well.”
— Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)