Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Ticketmaster of monopolizing the concert industry as Taylor Swift fans crashed the site trying to buy pre-sale tickets.
AOC’s ‘Reminder’ to Ticketmaster
Ocasio-Cortez took the opportunity to voice longstanding concern about the 2010 merger of Ticketmaster, the ticket sales and distribution company, and Live Nation, the events promoter and venue operator, into Live Nation Entertainment.
Ticketmaster announced after the sale went live, that it had seen “historically unprecedented demand” from millions of fans online who wanted to purchase tickets to Swift’s show the “Eras” tour.
“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in. Break them up,” the Democratic congresswoman from New York tweeted.
The merger AOC is talking about is related to when Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey, Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, Jerry Nadler of New York, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, and David Cicilline of Rhode Island sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Rebecca Slaughter, the acting chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
The letter asked them to revisit the merger in April 2021, according to Variety.
“We write in support of strong antitrust enforcement by the Biden Administration, including the live event ticket sales marketplace,” the letter begins.
“The evidence is overwhelming that the 2010 merger between the world’s largest concert promoter, Live Nation, and the biggest ticket provider, Ticketmaster, has strangled competition in live entertainment ticketing and harmed consumers and must be revisited.”
Government Bragging Rights
Ron Klain, White House Chief of Staff, also chimed in and pointed out that there were no site crashes when the administration’s student loan forgiveness application launched.
“Over my years in the public and private sectors, I’ve had people tell me: If only the government could work like business. Well, the team at @USEdgov and @USDS built a Student Loan Forgiveness portal that processed 8 MILLION applications in the first 30 hours without a crash,” Klain tweeted.
Due to the “historically unprecedented demand” and difficulties with the website, Ticketmaster released a statement saying those who have already purchased tickets are good to go and those who are still waiting in the queue should “hang tight.” The Capitol One sale was rescheduled for Wednesday, November 16 at 2:00 pm, local venue time.
“It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem it’s me.” — Taylor Swift regarding Ticketmaster after its site crashed.
But on Thursday evening Ticketmaster announced “it is canceling Friday’s planned general public sale for Taylor Swift’s upcoming stadium tour because it doesn’t have enough tickets.
The decision came two days after a presale event caused the site to crash and left many fans without tickets.
The ticketing company said in a statement Thursday that two million tickets to The Eras tour next year were sold during presales on Tuesday, the most tickets ever sold on the platform in a single day.
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