ADAPTATIONS

BY ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

The true “Great War” Taylor Swift laments over on Midnights was not World War One; rather, it was the bloody chaos of a Ticketmaster sale gone horribly wrong. What should have been a (relatively) simple presale ended with glitchy 5-hour queues, questionable pricing, and hordes of disappointed Swifties. Ticketmaster blames this all on “unprecedented demand.” But is that really it?

Taylor Swift is a global superstar. Of course demand would be huge. Did they not see this coming? Anyone with a brain would have expected that, but apparently no one at Ticketmaster HQ has a brain. And even if she were a smaller artist, the reason millions of people flooded (and then crashed) the site was because they had presale codes that Ticketmaster handed out. They knew how many codes there were! They knew millions would be on the website! So why are they turning around and blaming us?

But, glitches and gaslighting aside, the biggest problem at hand is the scalpers. Obviously, not everyone was able to snag a ticket. Never failing to miss an opportunity to scam desperate fans out of their hard-earned money, thousands of scalpers still managed to bypass Ticketmaster’s paper-thin security system and stole tickets out of people’s carts. Then they ran to StubHub and jacked up the price to beyond-illegal levels. What were once $300 floor tickets (at the low end—many fans spent the same on nosebleed tickets despite Swift’s request to not let that happen) are now up for $100,000 in some stadiums. I saw one for a non-Minneapolis show that was around $100… but it was a mile away from the venue. This is highly questionable at best and extremely illegal at worst. So why is Ticketmaster letting them do this? Are they trying to help them? These are questions only they have the answers to.

Ticketmaster is awful, that’s clear. But they’re also a monopoly. As in, they’ve either bought their competitors or the competitors are incomparable to the original. Monopolies are technically illegal, but for some reason (money), Congress doesn’t do anything about it. It’s ridiculous. Our country’s economy was built on the words of Adam Smith, a man who emphasized the importance of competition. Yet they let these massive companies commit this nonsense! They have the power to break up monopolies and have in the past, so how has Ticketmaster managed to get away with it for so long?

Luckily, change might be coming. After the horrors of November 15th, it was revealed that Ticketmaster was under investigation by the Department of Justice for its monopolistic nature. Swift’s fans, the ever-feared Swifties, also began a class action lawsuit against Ticketmaster and their shady ways.

I don’t know what change, if any, will arise from this. But at least Taylor Swift has shown that the cracks in this ticket monopoly are more obvious than ever.