Ticketmaster is in the hot seat on Capitol Hill after Taylor Swift ticket meltdown
WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday, Live Nation and Ticketmaster had to answer to lawmakers for ticket meltdown that caused bad blood with millions of Taylor Swift fans last November.
A Senate committee spent hours grilling company leaders on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers were just as upset with the ticket giant as fans were after it was nearly impossible for "Swifties" to get tickets including to her upcoming show at U.S. Bank Stadium, among other venues.
The hearing goes beyond the Taylor Swift fiasco and more about Live Nation-Ticketmaster becoming what they consider a monopoly, controlling about 70% of the market for concert tickets and live events.
The president and CFO of Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, Joe Berchtold said the competition has never been tougher. He added Ticketmaster has lost market share since the merger with Live Nation in 2010.
As for the disaster surrounding the distribution of Taylor Swift tickets, he blamed it on bots, saying while the system was prepared, they were hit with three times the amount of bot traffic than they had ever experienced before. But lawmakers weren't buying it.
"How many times have you called the FTC and said, 'Help me with this?'" asked Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
"We worked with the FTC on an investigation I believe it was in 2019 or 2020," Berchtold replied.
"So you called them once?" Blackburn responded. "You told me yesterday you have a hard time distinguishing between a bot and a real consumer, but the local power company down here -- that is not the billion dollar company you are -- they can tell when they've got a bad actor in their system."
"Senator, it is an ever-going arms race in terms of fighting the bots," Berchtold responded. "These are bots that are not trying to generally break into our system. They're bots that are trying to impersonate people."
Ticketmaster is also at the center of an ongoing antitrust investigation through the Department of Justice; lawmakers hope the information they're hearing Tuesday will help with that investigation.