Ticketmaster's botching of Taylor Swift ticket sales 'converted more Gen Zers into anti-monopolists overnight than anything I could have done,' FTC chair says
- Disastrous presales for Taylor Swift's Eras tour renewed controversy over Ticketmaster's dominance.
- In 2010, Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation, raising antitrust concerns.
The head of the Federal Trade Commission understands Swifties' antitrust concerns all too well.
Lina Khan, who chairs the agency, said on Tuesday that Ticketmaster's now infamous presale for Taylor Swift's highly anticipated Eras Tour "ended up converting more Gen Zers into anti-monopolists overnight than anything I could have done."
Khan's comments, which came at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit, highlight the intense and mobilized backlash from fans who found themselves thwarted last month by hours-long wait times, website crashes, and multi-thousand dollar ticket prices.
The Ticketmaster meltdown renewed longtime antitrust concerns over the company's dominance in the concert industry.
Since its 2010 merger with parent company Live Nation, the Justice Department has scrutinized the arrangement and extracted more concessions, requiring the website to play nice with other concert venues. Live Nation has been facing an ongoing DOJ antitrust investigation since before the Taylor Swift-Ticketmaster saga, the New York Times reported last month.
But lawmakers have continued sounding the alarm. Last year, a group of Democratic representatives called for the Biden Administration to probe the merger, and in November, progressive star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sought to galvanize the enraged Swiftie base, encouraging them to make their frustrations heard to the DOJ.
Fans have also taken matters into their hands. One group recently filed a complaint with the FTC, arguing that "Ticketmaster has held reign over the industry for years."
Representatives for Ticketmaster and Live Nation did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday morning.
Khan, who joined the FTC last year as its chair, is a known critic of Big Tech power and has positioned herself as an advocate for leveraging antitrust laws to break up powerful companies.
US antitrust laws are enforced by both the Department of Justice and the FTC, whose five-member commission can weigh in on lawsuits over mergers it considers problematic.
The Eras Tour episode has become an "I told you so" moment for those who had warned long ago about the costs of permitting Ticketmaster's merger with Live Nation in the first place. Former FTC policy director David Balto previously told Insider that the Eras Tour ticket crisis shows the merger's anti-competitive effects on consumers, including exorbitant fees.
Ticketmaster has issued apologies to disappointed fans, but generally pointed to "extraordinarily high demands" as the primary culprit when it called off the general sale to Swift's tour.