Taylor Swift Effect: Swifties Start Ticketmaster Website Scrutiny

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Swifties, as Taylor Swift fans are known, received a crash course in anti-monopoly advocacy this week when the Ticketmaster portal for the singer's concert tickets crashed and caused hours-long delays.

After waiting for hours only to fail to get tickets in a Nov. 15 online portal for select fans, some of them took to social media to vent en masse about the Beverly Hills-based company's oft-criticized market power and chokehold in live entertainment ticketing. Waves of their frustration intermixed with armchair antitrust analysis. Censure and ridicule of the company grew louder when Ticketmaster decided to cancel public ticket sales planned for Friday.

The issue is morphing into a matter beyond social media chatter. Prominent federal lawmakers, including Senate antitrust subcommitee chair Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) are joining in. State attorneys general are vowing to investigate. Klobuchar said Friday her committee will hold a hearing on Ticketmaster by the end of the year.

Ticketmaster, which consumer advocates estimate controls 70% of primary ticketing sales, is no stranger to criticism. But the latest firestorm resurfaces at a time of heightened antitrust focus among policymakers and the Biden administration's whole-of-government approach to cracking down on anticompetitive practices.

Few expect Ticketmaster, a subsidiary of Live Nation Entertainment, to be imminently broken up. But Congressional scrutiny, reinvigorated public campaigns and celebrities' public outcry could sustain the break-up-Ticketmaster drumbeat that would likely not go unnoticed by the Justice Department's antitrust regulators.

“These efforts are really giving a direct line to the DOJ on how these harms are