When Ticketmaster in France was forced to stop selling tickets for concerts in the country on Tuesday,The Eras Tour’ de Taylor Swift, The feeling of déjà vu was inevitable. The same thing happened in November last year. In USAwhere, after selling 2.4 million tickets for the tour that brought the artist back on stage for the first time in five years, the platform collapsed. As those in charge argued, he did so under the burden of an unprecedented demand and before the attack of “bots” used by scalpers to collect the coveted passes.
That fiasco and the political clout of a personality like Swift who has transcended the musical sphere a cultural, economic and social phenomenon, was the protagonist of a January Senate hearing. There, at a session where various senators scored their viral moments by referencing Swift’s lyrics and titles, The monopolistic practices of Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation, two giants that merged into one in 2010, have been questioned.
It wasn’t just some sort of miracle that brought Republicans and Democrats together to find out what happened, stop it from happening again, and strengthen consumer protections. A wave of legislation has also picked up speed at federal and state level, which could change quite a few things.
law wave
At least two bills have been introduced in each of the two chambers of Congress aimed at the functioning of the market for the sale and resale of tickets. The law also aims to improve the transparency of companies by forcing them to inform the buyer in advance of the costs of commissions and other costs associated with the listing. Surcharges, which can add up to 27% of the final price, according to a 2018 report by the Government Accountability Office.
At state level In Texas, “Save Our Swifties” is already a law, a rule named in honor of the artist’s supporters, which will impose fines on scalpers who use bots to collect tickets. And there are other suggestions in California, Massachusetts or Minnesota, where the law requiring the disclosure of commissions upfront in the ticket price is titled “1989,” the fifth of Swift’s ten studio albums.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation have backed some of these proposals, but their powerful lobbying arm, active for years, has increased opposition to others that would affect them more directly.. That of Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal, for example, would limit the long-term exclusivity deals Ticketmaster has with major ticketing venues. Finally, in Washington state, another Democratic senator, frustrated, withdrew a proposal that had put an end to the practice of “dynamic pricing.”companies use to raise prices when demand increases.
Definitely the debacle of Swift’s tickets, which in November expressed anger at what happened and didn’t hide her “anger” that even those who got them “felt like they had to go through several bear attacks to get it.” to achieve it.” “, It has brought renewed focus to the entertainment giant, which was previously investigated by the Justice Department in 2019 for possibly violating the conditions under which the merger was approved.
