January, 2023
By Julie Gonzalez, Staff Reporter
Throughout the years, we have found other ways to get a hold of tickets for our favorite concert, that being for Adele, BTS, Coldplay, and many more bands around the world that tour. As such, an app was created to help many fandoms get a hold of those very desired tickets, but sooner or later there would be trouble arising even with these advancements.
What is the problem?
Many of us have used the good old Ticketmaster to be able to attend our favorite concerts, but what happens when the employers at the concert claim that you have a fake? This is an ongoing issue that Ticketmaster has been going through for years. Many people have been complaining about the fact that they weren’t allowed inside the concert they paid for because they were told either it was a fake, duplicate, or isn’t showing up in their system. The fans would even show the workers in charge of the venue their receipt that they had officially bought it off of the website Ticketmaster, but the staff still had to follow all regiments and not allow them in as their scanner had told them that it was a fake. This arose a fight against attendees of concerts and Ticketmaster as they were supposed to be a website that sells official tickets, and many of these tickets aren’t even easy to get as many tickets can cost more than $1,000.
When was this brought to light?
This case went nationwide when Taylor Swift held her concert “Eras Tour,” and many Swifties had voiced that they were not allowed to attend the concert because their tickets were fake as it wasn’t showing up as an eligible ticket. More than a dozen disappointed fans had filed a Class-Action lawsuit against Ticketmaster and the parent company Live Nation for fraud, misinterpretation, and antitrust violations because of the botched tickets they ended up receiving by the website itself.
Live Nations response to the accusations was rather peculiar, they didn’t directly respond to the problem of many people getting their tickets rejected, but just addressed why they limited the number of tickets being sold, they did apologize to the fans, but, they responded why they canceled so many tickets and that was because they had an overwhelming amount of people ordering tickets.
Believe it or not, this wasn’t gonna stop fans to attend the next big concert which Ticketmaster was also in charge of selling the tickets only to receive the same criticism as before, and this was for Bad Bunny’s concert in CDMX, Mexico City. Many were expecting this to be one of his biggest concerts as people saw that many tickets were being sold at such a fast rate. And as the day came, many fans were ecstatic to see their favorite artist on stage, but, that’s when everything hit the fan, as many were entering, in a snap, people were already having to step to the side because they had fraudulent tickets.
So many people weren’t granted access to the venue and insisted that they had officially bought it on Ticketmaster’s website, what was expected to be the biggest event yet in CDMX, became the most empty concert yet for Bad Bunny as he had to perform for a half empty stadium.
How long has this been going on?
Believe it or not, this has been an ongoing issue for many artists in the music industry, the first lawsuit made against TicketMaster goes back to 1992, this was issued by Pearl Jam who then decided to boycott against the website. The reason why was because the website was having “monopoly charges,” Pearl Jam expressed that majority of his fans are teenagers that shouldn’t be needing to pay an extra $30 or more for a ticket that cost much less.
Aside from western fandoms being affected by the charge of Ticketmaster, many of those fans of artists from the east, mainly K-Pop fans, have also needed to deal with the same problem, if not worse. Average K-Pop tickets range from $35 – $2,000 dollars, plus that “service fee” they add when you are purchasing from them, causes fans to have to pay way more out of pocket for something that is not truly necessary.
But with Ticketmaster holding the monopoly in vending tickets, as artists continue to flock to them, tour after tour, does the question become: just how long will Ticketmaster continue to reign?
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