Ticketmaster has collapsed again under the weight of a Taylor Swift ticket sale – this time in France.
On Tuesday, as French fans prepared to buy tickets for six concerts in May and June 2024 on Swift’s Eras tour – four shows in Paris, two in Lyon – Ticketmaster’s website showed a huge line of customers ready to buy; A screenshot seemed to tell a fan that 1,023,504 In front of them were buyers in line.
Soon, Ticketmaster announced that sales of these shows have been put on ‘pause’. The company didn’t provide a statement, but said a new sale date would be announced and that “any codes that have not yet been used will remain valid.” But some fans’ social media posts appeared to show technical glitches on the Ticketmaster website, including a progress icon that “keeps spinning and spinning and spinning,” like a fan – You speak English with an American accent, but you have tickets worth 762 euros in your basket – say it.
Representatives from Ticketmaster and its parent company, concert giant Live Nation Entertainment, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The situation in France appeared to be a frustrating repetition of the problems that plagued Swift’s North American pre-sales in November, when an influx of millions of fans – and bots – overloaded Ticketmaster’s systems and fans reported problems, like tickets in their shopping carts that were pre-sale them disappeared could be purchased. Ticketmaster subsequently halted public sales, although the company also said it had sold more than two million tickets for the tour in a single day.
Issues like the one with Swift’s presale in November — as well as long-simmering concerns about Ticketmaster’s and Live Nation’s market dominance — led to a brutal Senate Judiciary hearing in January. Senators from both parties roundly labeled the company a monopolist and were skeptical of an executive’s statement that Ticketmaster was unable to withstand an onslaught of bots during Swift’s presale.
“This is incredible,” Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, said at the hearing. “Why,” she added, “didn’t you develop an algorithm to differentiate between what is a bot and what is a consumer?”
Still, demand for Swift tickets has been exceptional, as Swift sells out arenas everywhere it plays and tickets cost thousands of dollars on the secondary market. She is scheduled to wrap up the North American leg of her tour next month and then play in Latin America, Asia and Europe.
The Justice Department has separately conducted an antitrust investigation into Live Nation. The Justice Department has not confirmed this investigation, but Live Nation executive director Michael Rapino has spoken openly about it.