By Alexandra Murphy
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour was a long time coming and sparked global excitement upon its announcement. As soon as people were able to register as verified fans through Ticketmaster, the truly unprecedented demand became obvious. The desire for Eras Tour tickets
exponentially exceeded the supply and many fans were beaten out by bot scalpers. These scalpers then resold the tickets for up to 20 times the original price - taking advantage of fans and knowing people were willing to pay the high price. Ticketmaster’s website crashed numerous times the day of the verified fan sale, leaving some fans waiting in queues for more than 10 hours, and then selling out before a general sale could even occur.
Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010, the two together creating essentially a monopoly on concert and event tickets. The poor handling of this event emphasizes the problem with Ticketmaster as a monopoly. The company was the only vendor option to provide tickets for all but 2 concerts which left Swift no choice but to use them. In the end, the fans were the ones to suffer. The fans either had to lose a day of productivity and possibly still be left without tickets, or pay outrageous prices after the fact, just to see Swift. All of this suffering occurred due to the monopolistic control of Ticketmaster and its poor estimation of necessary supply and demand.
