The Great Ticketmaster Fiasco

After the successful release of Taylor Swift’s latest album “Midnight,” fans were ecstatic to have the opportunity to buy tickets for her upcoming tour. However, this excitement of getting a concert ticket was short lived and ended in a tragic disaster.  

Ticket presales apparently overwhelmed the Ticketmaster website with BOTS, specialized computer software that helps ticket scalpers fraudulently buy tickets for resale, buying every available ticket on the site and saving zero tickets for the general public to purchase. Many fans were outraged and disappointed at the skyrocketed prices for a Taylor Swift concert ticket. According to The “New York Times,” some tickets are selling for up to $95,000.

The website Ticketmaster is known for having BOTS. The BOTS buy up as many tickets as possible to only later jack the price up extremely high to create a profit. This is very disappointing to true fans because now the event is out of their price range. Congress is considering asking the Federal Trade Commission whether it plans on enforcing the 2016 law designed to stop these types of attacks on consumers. There is a subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security that wrote a letter asking whether the commission will invoke the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, or BOTS Act against Ticketmaster. Currently, there is a committee looking into Ticketmaster. 

Now it is easy to place all the blame on Ticketmaster, but Taylor Swift should take some of this blame, too. Swift could have set up her site better and protected the consumer. Swift did not. Swift could have worked with Ticketmaster closer. Swift did not. There are ways other popular artists protect the consumer. Swift did not take any of the precautions to protect her fan base consumers. 

Kyra Yerardi, a senior at Carolina Forest added, “I am sad about not being able to get tickets, but honestly, I wasn’t expecting to be able to get them. I don’t think Ticketmaster was properly prepared to handle a ticket release like this. I would still like to try and get tickets, but reselling prices are crazy.”

Many students at Carolina Forest High School ended up in long queues, only to be kicked out of the queue or to never have the opportunity to receive a ticket. However, some lucky students did end up with a Taylor Swift ticket at a reasonable price. These students are ecstatic to see one of their favorite artists along with having the opportunity to witness the songs throughout the decade of Swift’s career. Other students still remain frustrated at the whole debacle of events that took place on the Ticketmaster website. 

Ryann Secrist, a sophomore at Carolina Forest, stated, “I feel extremely excited to see her. I was on Ticketmaster for a whole 24 hours.”

All in all, this concert event should have been a dream come true for Taylor Swift’s fans. The fans should have had the opportunity to celebrate a decade of Swift’s music. Instead, the fans ended up in a nightmare without anything to celebrate. 

Image:  Google