Concerned parties , chairman of
Live Nation Entertainment, in 2019
Greg Maffei, chairman of Live Nation, spoke to
CNBC on November 16. He claimed that Ticketmaster prepared for 1.5 million verified fans but 14 million showed up: "we could have filled 900 stadiums." In a detailed statement, Ticketmaster explained that 3.5 million fans pre-registered for the Verified Fan program—the largest in platform history—two million of whom were placed on the waitlist while 1.5 million were allowed to purchase first, as only "40% of invited fans actually show up and buy tickets, and most purchase an average of 3 tickets." However, the website was overwhelmed by the "staggering" number of fans as well as bots without presale codes, resulting in "3.5 billion total system requests—[four times the site's] previous peak." Therefore, Ticketmaster attempted to slow down the sale by waitlisting more customers "to stabilize the systems", which in turn prolonged the queue and waiting time. Maffei also claimed that "
AEG, our competitor, who is the promoter for Taylor Swift, chose to use us because, in reality, we are the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world... Even our competitors want to come on our platform." Swift released a statement on November 18, 2022, via her
Instagram story; she stated that she is "pissed off" and found the fiasco "excruciating". She asserted that she is protective of her fans and wanted to assure a quality experience and claimed that it had been difficult to "trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties". Later that same day, Ticketmaster issued an apology "to Taylor and all of her fans" via their Twitter account, but remarked that "less than 5% of the tickets for the tour have been sold or posted for resale on the secondary market" such as
StubHub. Ticketmaster also dismissed accusations of
anti-competitive practices, noting it remains "under a
consent decree with the Justice Department following its 2010 merger with Live Nation" and the absence of "evidence of systemic violations of the consent decree." On December 12, 2022, Ticketmaster began mailing select registered fans—"identified as [fans] who received a boost during the Verified Fan presale but did not purchase tickets"—and notified them of a second ticket-purchasing opportunity, with which they can buy a maximum of two tickets each. Ticketmaster stated that Swift's team asked the company to create this opportunity for fans.
Fans and consumers , a political activist organization led by
Generation Z, opened an antitrust initiative called "S.W.I.F.T." (Swifties Working to Increase Fairness from Ticketmaster) on November 17, with aims to "bring together Gen Z organizers to advocate for legislation expanding federal authority to oversee and prevent future monopolies around entertainment." In order to evade scalpers, some fans used their "tight-knit community" across social media platforms to form accounts such as "@ErasTourResell" and "TS Tour Connect" to organize a network of
spreadsheets,
Google Forms, and online
bulletin boards, which facilitated exchanges of tickets at face-value costs from fans who wanted to re-sell to fans who wanted to buy. Volunteers of the initiative worked through ticket submissions, verified them via
screen recordings and confirmation emails, and posted out the listings of tickets. ErasTourResell is headed by three fans of Swift, namely Courtney Johnston, Channette Garay, and Angel Richards. According to
The New York Times, ErasTourResell alone has arranged over 1,300 ticket transactions between fans as of March 2023. According to
The Wall Street Journal, ErasTourResell has helped over 3,000 fans get tickets at face value as of July 2023.
Political action , a member of the
U.S. House of Representatives, was one of the first U.S. lawmakers to criticize Ticketmaster following the website crash. Following widespread social media posts by customers upset with the website crash, several U.S. lawmakers and
consumer groups took notice of the issue. Senator
Amy Klobuchar, chair of the
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, penned an open letter to the CEO of Ticketmaster, Rapino, regarding her "serious concerns" over the company's operations. She wrote, "Ticketmaster's power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the
competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services. That can result in the types of dramatic service failures we saw this week, where consumers are the ones that pay the price." The
Tennessee Attorney General,
Jonathan Skrmetti, initiated an investigation into "consumer complaints about chaos during the presale of tickets" to the tour. He said in a press conference that "a lack of competition [for Ticketmaster] has led to a poor experience and higher prices for consumers." and North Carolina also began investigating Live Nation–Ticketmaster on the grounds of
consumer rights violations. , the President of the U.S., pushed Ticketmaster and other ticket-selling companies to abandon
junk fees detrimental to consumers. On November 18, Pascrell, co-signed by 30 other
House Democrats, petitioned the federal Department of Justice to open a formal investigation into the issue. Subsequently,
The New York Times stated that the Department of Justice had previously opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster. On November 19, Representative Cicilline, who chairs the
House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, urged the Department of Justice to investigate and break up the companies. He tweeted that "Ticketmaster's excessive wait times and fees are completely unacceptable, as seen with today's" and "It's no secret that Live Nation–Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly." The
White House Press Secretary,
Karine Jean-Pierre, declined to comment on a potential investigation into the fiasco, but stated that the U.S. President,
Joe Biden, "has been crystal clear on this", quoting his comment on the issue: "
capitalism without competition isn't capitalism, it's
exploitation." Biden subsequently tweeted that "Millions of Americans will travel home for the holidays and will get hit with hidden 'junk' fees from airlines, hotels—maybe even tickets for a holiday show the family wants to see. It isn't right. My Administration is taking actions to reduce or eliminate these surprise fees." On November 23, Klobuchar and
Mike Lee, the senior senator from Utah, announced that the
U.S. Senate antitrust panel will hold a
hearing to address Ticketmaster and Live Nation's "lack of competition in the industry". It was later announced on January 18, 2023, that the hearing is set for January 24. On November 29, Blumenthal and Senator
Marsha Blackburn wrote a letter to the
Federal Trade Commission (FTC), posing questions about the agency's "plans to fight the use of bots in ticketing", and requesting to enforce the
Better Online Tickets Sales Act (BOTS Act), which is a 2016 federal law that grants the U.S. government "the authority to crack down on those who misuse bots—software applications that are programmed to run automated tasks online—to buy large amounts of tickets for profit... and bans the resale of tickets bought using bots, and people who illegally sell the tickets face a $16,000 fine." The letter also highlighted the "wild" ticket prices at third-party sites, as high as $1,000 for a
Bruce Springsteen concert and $40,000 for
Adele, stating "preventing this type of consumer harm is exactly why Congress chose to enact the BOTS Act six years ago and why we both chose to sponsor that bill." On December 6, the FTC chair,
Lina Khan, told on
The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit that companies like Ticketmaster can become "too big to care", and clarified that it was the Justice Department that approved the 2010 merger. She assured that the department "continues to look at this" and added that the controversy "ended up converting more Gen Zers into anti-monopolists overnight than anything I could have done." In June 2023, media outlets reported that, following a meeting with Biden and the FTC, Ticketmaster,
SeatGeek, and other ticketing companies agreed to abolish "
junk fees"—extra costs added on at the end of ticket purchases, and to show consumers the fee breakdown upfront. Biden and
National Economic Council director
Lael Brainaird made a press statement at the White House on June 15, 2023, highlighting the push to prohibit such deceptive, surprise fees federally, applying to
resorts and
rentals as well. American legal scholar
William Kovacic, a former FTC chair, called it the "Taylor Swift policy adjustment." In November 2023, the
Senate Subcommittee on Investigations issued a
subpoena to Ticketmaster and Live Nation "for documents related to the company's ticket pricing, fees, and resale practices" following a months-long inquiry. Blumenthal, chair of the subcommittee, said the subpoena was in response to Live Nation's "egregiously stonewall[ing]" of the inquiry. A Live Nation spokesperson said in a statement that the company "voluntarily worked with the Subcommittee from the start and provid[ed] extensive information". In April 2024,
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Justice was preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation. On December 17, 2024, the FTC officially passed the Junk Fees Rule to ban "unfair and deceptive pricing practices" that hide total prices for various industries, including short-term lodging. In March 2025, U.S. president
Donald Trump signed an
executive order directing the FTC to crack down on price gouging by ticket resellers. In August, the FTC sued the ticket reseller Key Investment Group, accusing the company of violating the BOTS Act and the
FTC Act by using fake or purchased Ticketmaster accounts to evade purchasing limits, then resell the tickets for a
markup. The FTC said the company made more than $1.2 million reselling 2,280 Eras Tour tickets it bought in 2023.
Senate committee hearing censured Ticketmaster in a hearing at the
Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., on January 24, 2023. The hearing was telecast live. Various media outlets reported that both the
Democrat and
Republican senators "grilled" Ticketmaster's representative, Joe Berchtold, the company's chief financial officer. Live Nation cited several letters of support within its testimony, including one from American country singer
Garth Brooks. Several senators also quoted Swift's lyrics in their arguments, including her 2022 single "
Anti-Hero". Free Britney America, a D.C. organization that was part of the
Free Britney movement, protested outside the
U.S. Capitol during the hearing "in support of ending Ticketmaster-Live Nation's monopoly over the live event and ticketing industry." Following the hearing,
Billboard stated that politicians of both the political parties, who see criticizing Ticketmaster as a "winning political issue and an opportunity to reach constituents who have long complained about the ticketing giant", are more of a threat to Ticketmaster than Swift herself. According to the magazine, the senators' perspective during the hearing is that "if the Live Nation-owned platform didn't have such market dominance (around 80% of large venues in the U.S. have exclusive Ticketmaster deals), greater competition would force the company to innovate and improve its services—potentially avoiding the kinds of issues that spoiled the Swift sale", and added that Ticketmaster is widely "despised" by the public, making an "easy target for rare
bipartisan political action".
The Washington Post columnist Helaine Olen opined the Ticketmaster fiasco "was so bad it united the parties", whereas CNN journalist Allison Morrow wrote in an article titled "One Nation, Under Swift" that Swift's fans have united the
two parties in a way "the
Founding Fathers failed to anticipate".
Bills and legislation The controversy and "Swift's star power" has inspired a string of law
bills. According to Carolyn Sloane, assistant professor of economics of the
University of California, Riverside, the fiasco spurred mass political action because Swift "has scaled her talent through demographic technology". On the federal level, Klobuchar and Blumenthal proposed the Unlocking Tickets Markets Act in the U.S. Senate; it would grant the Federal Trade Commission the power to prevent "excessively long" exclusive contracts and open the market to more ticket-selling companies than just one like Ticketmaster. The issue inspired several U.S. states to legislate on the matter as well. The
New York State Assembly enacted a bill in December 2022 proposed by member
Kenny Burgos "to crack down on scalping and control the ticket-resale market." Members of the
Massachusetts General Court introduced the "Taylor Swift Bill" in March 2023 that mandates ticketing companies to disclose full ticket costs upfront and outlaw dynamic pricing in the state.
Texas governor Greg Abbott signed the "Save Our Swifties" bill into law in May 2023, banning the use of bots and other technology to bulk-purchase concert tickets. Violation will elicit a penalty of up to $10,000 for every ticket purchase. The
California State Assembly passed Bill 8, sponsored by
Laura Friedman,
Jacqui Irwin and
Scott Wilk, that requires ticket sellers to disclose the total prices upfront. In a statement to
The Washington Post, Ticketmaster refused to comment on any alleged negotiations with lawmakers regarding the bills, but noted it had to "ramp up our engagement with policymakers because they are being inundated with misinformation peddled by scalpers." against Ticketmaster and Live Nation for "intentional deception", "fraud,
price fixing and antitrust violations". It demanded a
civil penalty of $2500 for every violation of the
California Unfair Competition Law, The lawsuit also named
Los Angeles County, where Ticketmaster is headquartered, as a
defendant. Julie Barfuss, the lead plaintiff, said that after trying to purchase tickets numerous times unsuccessfully, Barfuss chatted with a customer service worker who told her that the system considered Barfuss a bot for attempting to buy tickets 41 times. Barfuss's card also was declined 41 times, charging her an additional sum of $14,286.70 due to the purchase attempts. Media outlets then reported that both parties have agreed to take the case to a formal trial in the
United States District Court for the Central District of California, with the first hearing on March 28, 2023; some plaintiffs held signs outside the court campus during the hearing.
Sterioff v. Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster On December 20, another lawsuit, a federal
class action, was filed in the
U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, by a Swift fan named Michelle Sterioff, accusing Live Nation–Ticketmaster of "intentionally and purposefully" violating antitrust laws and misleading "millions of fans" into believing that they would prevent bots and scalpers from participating in the ticket sale. In a filing on February 24, Live Nation asked the judge to dismiss the class action and instead force the plaintiff to be heard privately in arbitration, citing the federal appeals court ruling in the Barfuss suit that upheld arbitration. In August 2023, both parties agreed to put the case on hold, agreeing "to continue their ongoing settlement discussions through mediation." On December 12, 2023, a
voluntary dismissal notice was submitted by Sterioff, asking to terminate lawsuit.
Rolling Stone opined that "it's unclear if any kind of settlement has been reached in the suit." Additionally, a day after the case was filed, a consumer case seeking $5 billion in damages from Live Nation Entertainment on potentially millions of individuals who purchased tickets through Ticketmaster was also filed in the same court. On April 15, 2026, a federal jury based in New York found that Live Nation was liable on the states' antitrust claims, concluding that the company held an illegal monopoly over live events industry which enabled it to overcharge ticket consumers.
Felony arrests In March 2025, two hackers— Tyrone Rose and Shamara P. Simmons—were arrested and arraigned in New York City for stealing and reselling over 900 concert tickets of the Eras Tour, earning $635,000 in illegal profits. They were charged with grand
larceny,
computer tampering,
money laundering, and conspiracy. According to the district attorney
Melinda Katz, Rose and Simmons were employed by Sunderland, a third-party contractor for StubHub in
Kingston, Jamaica. The accomplices used their access to StubHub's systems to intercept tickets. Katz claimed that they stole URLs for already-sold tickets and posted the tickets on StubHub, reselling them for profit from June 2022 to July 2023. Simmons passed away. In October 2025, Rose pled guilty to a single count of grand larceny in the second degree over the scalping scheme, while a sentencing hearing on that charge was set for January 2026. == Media reception ==