2023-07-13 09:22:12
Taylor Swift fans hate the platform that disappointed them again when the French dates of The Eras Tour were sold out. The fiascos are linked and Ticketmaster does not do much. No need: both artists and fans are prisoners of its platform.
Each time it’s the same circus. A very popular artist (your choice: Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, Lana Del Rey, The Weeknd…) announces a tour, fans save months in advance, pre-register, wait hours on the day of the sale and meet for the majority, empty-handed, disappointed and humiliated by Ticketmaster, before sharing their discomfort en masse on social networks.
Taylor Swift, herself, compared the experiences of his fans at “several bear attacks”. The last debacle dates back to July 11, when tickets were sold for the Paris and Lyon dates of Taylor Swift’s tour (her again). The malfunctions were such that Ticketmaster had to pause the sale of Parisian concerts, and postpone that for Lyon to a date still unknown. Last year, the platform experienced the same fiasco for the American dates of the tour.
How does Ticketmaster work for big gigs?
To access sales for certain concerts, fans must first pre-register. “We have 5 days to register and then we are drawn. Some are directly selected and others are on the waiting list. Ticketmaster sends us a code which allows us to access the sale”, explains Camille who was not selected for the concert in Paris, but for that of Lyon. But discouraged by the system, she finally preferred to get her place through the Works Council of a friend, after asking her network on Twitter.
Once the code is in hand, the selected people must log in to TicketMaster and are placed in a virtual queue. Those who weren’t lucky enough to be selected will have to keep their fingers crossed that someone doesn’t show up for the sale. Which is unlikely, judges Camille.
Anxiety and Bugs
Normally this system (extremely anxiety-provoking) is supposed to avoid too many connections on the day of the sale. Ticketmaster also presents this pre-selection as a means of blocking buyer bots. Computer programs that buy concert tickets and other limited consumer goods faster than anyone else. The goal for those who deploy these bots? Resell far more expensive tickets on the resale market.
But in the case of Taylor Swift’s French concerts, these pitfalls do not seem to have been avoided. The number of people in the virtual queue far exceeded the number of seats available, resulting in an endless wait for fans. On social media, some fans reported being over a million in line (for around 160,000 seats available).
“Once past the queue, many people were disconnected from their TicketMaster accounts and were therefore unable to make payment,” says Camille, who has followed the tribulations of her friends and acquaintances. From the moment you finish the queue, you only have 15 minutes to complete the purchase. But this deadline was difficult to respect given the connection problems.
For the bots, it’s grated too. According to the president of Live Nation (which owns Ticketmaster), the platform would have suffered “three times more traffic” from bots than usual on the day of the sale of tickets for the concerts in Paris.
No real need to improve things
The boss says he learned lessons from his experiences. But the same situation seems to recur almost systematically when the platform manages large concerts. If Ticketmaster doesn’t seem to be doing much to improve the experience of its users, it’s because the platform can afford it. Because she has reigned supreme in the concert sector for a decade. In 2010, the platform already controls 80% of ticket sales, and it is absorbed by Live Nation, leader in the management of concert halls. Together they create a monopoly. In addition, the platform has developed a resale service and takes – of course – a commission on these resales. Approximately 70% of tickets to concerts held in major venues in the United States are now sold through Ticketmaster. Internationally, the platform sells 500 million tickets per year in more than 30 countries. It is the largest company in the sector.
The “Break Up Ticketmaster” coalition in the United States has denounced this monopoly since October 2022, believing that this system is hurting concert halls, artists and fans, who all find themselves forced to pass via Ticket master. Many concert halls and stadiums have exclusive contracts with the site, as do some artists. This is the case for the next tour of Taylor Swift. And that’s also why Ticketmaster had to deal with a very large number of connections. Ticketmaster is in fine victim of his own trap.
“We don’t go back to bad restaurants. If you have a bad experience at one restaurant, you leave because there are 20 others you can go to,” explained Krista Brown, policy analyst within the association American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) and member of this coalition against Ticketmaster, to the media Vox. “But when you go to Ticketmaster, you set yourself up for a horrible experience. And you also prepare yourself to have to start over and over again. »
The coalition is counting on the Biden administration to dismantle this monopoly. The president indeed revives a fairly strict anti-monopoly policy. Ticketmaster was received in the US Senate in January 2023 on its dominant position.
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