Lawmakers Demand Ticketmaster Be Broken Up After Taylor Swift Ticketing Crash

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Lawmakers Demand Ticketmaster Be Broken Up After Taylor Swift Ticketing Crash

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Tickets for Taylor Swift’s gargantuan Eras Tour (which has expanded significantly to encompass 51 stadium shows) went on sale Tuesday. The demand was so intense that Ticketmaster’s servers crashed, and the company temporarily suspended the sale of Swift tickets. Now, as Politico points out, several Democrats in Congress are calling for the breakup of Ticketmaster’s monopoly and an investigation into its merger with Live Nation.

“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in,” New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “Break them up.” Her fellow “squad” member, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, also posted, “Break up Ticketmaster,” along with recent video of President Biden vowing to crack down on Ticketmaster’s excessive fees.

Meanwhile Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline and others are calling on the Justice Department to investigate Ticketmaster’s business practices. “.@Ticketmaster’s excessive wait times and fees are completely unacceptable, as seen with today’s @taylorswift13 tickets, and are a symptom of a larger problem. It’s no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly,” Cicilline wrote. “The merger of these companies should never have been allowed in the first place, which is why I have joined @FrankPallone, @RepJerryNadler, and @BillPascrell to call on the DOJ to investigate Live Nation’s efforts to jack up prices and strangle competition.”

How wild would it be if disgruntled Taylor Swift fans finished what Pearl Jam started three decades ago?

https://twitter.com/BillPascrell/status/1592583780669485056

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