On Jan. 24  the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing about Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s parent company, and their dominance in the ticketing industry following the many issues that occurred during the pre-sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. During the three hour long court session, Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold was questioned intensely by committee members about the way his company handled Swift’s tickets.

Nov. 15, 2022 hundreds of fans missed work and school in hopes to secure tickets for Swift’s highly anticipated Eras Tour during the pre-sale. However it was not smooth sailing,  Ticketmaster crashed multiple times and fans were kicked out of line, their tickets mysteriously disappearing from their cart. The general sale of tickets was also cancelled by Ticketmaster “due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand,” the company said in a statement.  

Both Democrats and Republicans were in agreement that Ticketmaster has become a monopoly since its unification with Live Nation entertainment. While the ticketing company’s size has grown, its way of doing things has stayed the same

“The fact of the matter is Live Nation-Ticketmaster is the 800-pound gorilla here,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, said Tuesday night at the congressional hearing. “This whole concert ticket system is a mess, a monopolistic mess.”

Swift was hesitant to use Ticketmaster as the main company to sell her tickets. Ticketmaster reassured her it could handle the ticket traffic while knowing its website was not able to handle the overwhelming amount of fans attempting to purchase tickets and the ticket bots whose goal is to get as many as possible to resell at a higher price. 

 “[Ticketmaster was] hit with three times the amount of bot traffic than we had ever experienced” amid the “unprecedented demand for Taylor Swift tickets.” The bot activity “required us to slow down and even pause our sales. This is what led to a terrible consumer experience that we deeply regret,” Berchtold said at the hearing.

The entertainment industry as a whole has attempted to push back on Ticketmaster. At the hearing multiple members of the industry spoke up and even Ticketmaster rival, SeatGeek. 

“Live Nation controls the most popular entertainers in the world, routes most of the large tours, operates the ticketing systems and even owns many of the venues,” SeatGeek CEO Jack Groetzinger said. “This power over the entire live entertainment industry allows Live Nation to maintain its monopolistic influence over the primary ticketing market.”

In keeping with the reason why the congressional hearing occurred, quite a few committee members made references to Swift’s lyrics in their comments.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, said during her opening remarks, “You can’t have too much consolidation — something that, unfortunately for this country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say, we know ‘all too well.’”

“I had hoped as of a few months ago to get the gavel back, but once again, she’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers,” Sen. Mike Lee, said. “I have to throw out, in deference to my daughter Eliza, one more Taylor Swift quote: ‘Karma’s a relaxing thought. Aren’t you envious that for you it’s not?’ That’s all I’ve got to say.” 

Sen. Blumenthal said, “Ticketmaster ought to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m the problem. It’s me.'”