After Tuesday’s debacle in which attempted presale ticket purchases for Taylor Swift’s latest tour crashed the Ticketmaster website, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti addressed the issue in a Wednesday press conference.
Ticketmaster’s website crashed upon the release of Swift’s presale tickets, enraging customers.
“There are no allegations at this time about any misconduct,” Skrmetti said. “But we have received complaints, and we are very concerned about this very dominant market player.”
Ticketmaster recently merged with LiveNation, another giant concert ticket provider.
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.
He said that knowing Swift tickets would be in high demand, the company could have reasonably inferred that it would have web traffic issues upon the release of the presale tickets, but might have ignored those concerns.
“We can get a court order that makes the company do better,” Skrmetti said in response to a question about what can be done if Ticketmaster has violated Tennessee’s consumer protection laws.
Skrmetti said that Tennessee has chosen to take on the investigation because Nashville is a huge music market, meaning that Tennesseeans have a real interest in ensuring that Ticketmaster is not violating the law.
He also said that one other state is interested in the investigation, though he did not say which state.
The company blamed technical difficulties for the confusion.
“We are currently experiencing technical difficulties and our team is working to resolve this as soon as possible,” it reportedly said. “We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience.”
Later, it provided fans with instructions to access their tickets.
“Fans who have received a code to the TaylorSwiftTix Presale, should login and access the queue through the link they received via text rather than entering through the Ticketmaster homepage. This will ensure an optimal shopping experience,” the company said.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Taylor Swift” by Eva Rinaldi. CC BY-SA 2.0.
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