Taylor Swift is one of the few world-class singer that known to put much of her feelings into words, to create lyrics that explain her life.
The Eras Tour is Swift's sixth headlining concert tour, after she cancelled her three tours due to the COVID-19, With Eras Tour, the singer wants to support of all of her albums, to make it up to what her fans have lost in the three years of pandemic.
"Swifties" as what her fans are called, gathered by the masses to watch her concert.
Many of her fans sat in the Ticketmaster queue for hours waiting to get Swift tickets during the pre-sale.
But due to "high demand" and "insufficient remaining ticket inventory," the ticket-selling site paused the Central Standard Time queues, delayed the West Coast times, and pushed the Capital One presale to accommodate the demand.
This clearly angered many of Taylor Swift's fans.
Taylor Swift herself also expressed her disappointment:
"We've been doing this for decades together and over the years, I've brought so many elements of my career in house. I've done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans' experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It's really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse."
"There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I'm trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I'm not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It's truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them."
"And to those who didn't get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means."
The fiasco happened partly because of bots.
Ticketmaster had a plan, in which it used the term "verified fans" as a way to prioritize certain Swifties. These people were given codes to enter the Tickermaster pre-sale.
Tickermaster opened it up for only 1.5 verified Taylor Swift fans.
But apparently 14 million people visited Ticketmaster's website, most of which, were bots that weren't supposed to be there.
More or less, that many people could have filled 900 stadiums, explained the CEO of Live Nation's biggest shareholder Liberty Media's Greg Maffei.
After the cancelation, ticket prices skyrocketed on re-sale sites.
Responding to the situation, the U.S. Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster's owner, Live Nation Entertainment (LYV.N).
The case predates the botched pre-sale of Taylor Swift tickets, but said to focus on whether LYV.N has abused its power over the multibillion-dollar live music industry.
In a statement posted on its website, LYV.N said that it “takes its responsibilities under the antitrust laws seriously and does not engage in behaviors that could justify antitrust litigation.”
It said that the markets for concert promotion and ticketing services were both competitive.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre indicated that U.S. President Joe Biden holds little sympathy for companies that are monopolistic.
"He's been crystal clear on this," Jean-Pierre said.
"And I quote: 'capitalism without competition isn't capitalism, it's exploitation.'"
Biden later tweeted that his administration is doing everything it can to cut so-called junk fees, including those who are charging to see a show over the holidays.