Confusion and chaos surrounding Ticketmaster’s presale plans for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour prompted calls to break up Live Nation, which merged with Ticketmaster in 2010. 

Key Quotes: On Wednesday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) — who chairs the Senate’s antitrust committee — wrote a letter to Live Nation’s CEO expressing “serious concerns about the state of competition in the ticketing industry.” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti also said he was looking into consumer complaints regarding ticket sales for Swift’s concerts. On Thursday, Ticketmaster canceled plans for a Friday public sale of Taylor Swift tickets, citing “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.” 

For Context: Questions surrounding Ticketmaster’s influence are nothing new. By some counts, Ticketmaster accounts for over half of all US ticket sales, and a 2022 class action lawsuit accused Live Nation of threatening to shut out concert venues that did not use Ticketmaster as their primary ticketing provider. Despite this influence, Ticketmaster was reportedly overwhelmed with “unprecedented” site traffic when Swift tickets went on sale, prompting delays, error messages, and general confusion. 

How the Media Covered It: Coverage was common and mostly balanced across the spectrum, particularly in business outlets. Some coverage across the spectrum focused specifically on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) criticism of Ticketmaster. Coverage in left-rated outlets was more likely to directly support antitrust action.