Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is urging the federal government to ‘get serious’ about implementing her Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act after fans across the country were unable to acquire tickets to Taylor Swift’s upcoming Eras Tour.
Earlier in November, as previously reported by The Tennessee Star, Ticketmaster announced that it suspended ticket sales for the tour after the site experienced an array of problems during its previous ticket presale event.
Responding to the fiasco, Greg Maffei, the CEO of Ticketmaster’s largest shareholder, Liberty Media, claimed on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that 14 million people, including bots, tried to buy Taylor Swift presale tickets.
In response, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said his office would investigate whether the company might have a monopoly on the ticket sales market and may be abusing its customers, delivering a low-quality product because it has little market competition.
In a tweet, Senator Blackburn thanked Attorney General Skrmetti for his efforts to investigate the situation when she added that the federal government should ‘get serious’ about implementing her BOTS Act.
Thank you, @AGTennessee Skrmetti, for taking swift action to hold @Ticketmaster accountable.
The FTC should stop sitting on the sidelines and get serious about implementing my legislation to prevent bots and scammers from snagging tickets online. https://t.co/ACGzhe8UGm— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) November 18, 2022
“Thank you, @AGTennessee Skrmetti, for taking swift action to hold @Ticketmaster accountable. The FTC should stop sitting on the sidelines and get serious about implementing my legislation to prevent bots and scammers from snagging tickets online,” Blackburn tweeted.
Blackburn’s BOTS Act of 2016 was signed into federal law by President Barack Obama on December 14, 2016. The legislation “aims to prevent ticket brokers from buying large numbers of event tickets and reselling them to interested customers at inflated prices,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
A person cannot circumvent online ticket sellers’ (such as Ticketmaster’s) access controls or measures to enforce ticket-purchasing limits under the BOTS Act. Furthermore, it prevents circumvention of access control to resell tickets, the DOJ notes.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Background Photo “Marsha Blackburn” by Martin Falbisoner. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Seriously? Sell the tickets at the door. I think our government should focus on not spending the next 30 generations trust in for votes to get reelected.
I agree! Sell them at the door. That would run Ticketmaster out of business.