After a debacle earlier this week that led to Tennessee’s attorney general announcing an investigation into event ticketing titan Ticketmaster, the company said it would not be selling tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour on Friday.
“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 cancelled,” Tickemaster said Thursday afternoon on Twitter.
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 cancelled.
— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) November 17, 2022
Earlier this week, Swift fans swarmed the website to obtain tickets for the tour, only to find that the site had crashed.
Some waited for hours for the site to allow them to purchase tickets to no avail. Others said they were logged out of their accounts and could not complete purchases of the tickets.
In response, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti Wednesday announced an investigation into Ticketmaster over potential violations of consumer protection laws.
“There are no allegations at this time about any misconduct,” Skrmetti said. “But we have received complaints, and we are very concerned about this very dominant market player.”
He noted that Ticketmaster could have known its site would be flooded with users who were ready to purchase Swift tickets, but might have ignored those concerns because it dominates the market for ticket sales.
“We can get a court order that makes the company do better,” Skrmetti said in response to a question about what can be done if Ticketmaster has violated Tennessee’s consumer protection laws.
Skrmetti joined The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy Thursday to discuss further.
He elaborated on the program:
So this is a good example of the bread-and-butter consumer protection work that the office does. I love to sue the federal government. We’re going to do a lot more of that.
But we’re also responsible for responding to consumer complaints and making sure that companies are following our basic laws that require essentially good faith and fair dealing. And we’re responsible for enforcing the antitrust laws that say we have to make sure that markets are working.
And this is potentially an example of both. We don’t have any specific allegations against the company yet, but there have been a lot of complaints and a lot of speculation about misconduct.
There is no word on when the site will make Swift tickets available to consumers again.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Taylor Swift” by Eva Rinaldi. CC BY-SA 2.0.
