Ticketmaster — owned by Live Nation Entertainment — has faced scrutiny as fans expressed anger over challenges they faced when trying to purchase concert tickets. A determined group of fans who tried to secure tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and later initiated a lawsuit against Live Nation — after battling technical glitches, competition with bots and high prices — may get its day in court.
Julie Barfuss, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, is at the forefront of this legal battle. The complaint, filed in December 2022, claims breach of contract, fraud, negligence, negligent misrepresentation and antitrust violations.
“Honestly, I’m not in it for the money. I’ve never been,” Barfuss said. “And, obviously, the U.S. leg of the tour is over. I’m not in it for the tickets either. I never really was. I have the ability to buy tickets on the second-hand market. I did make it to a concert. But I would love to see some change.”
Ticketmaster often stands as the exclusive ticketing distributor for major events, leaving fans with little choice but to resort to the resale market. Furthermore, Ticketmaster has safeguarded itself from prolonged, costly trials with an “arbitration clause.”
“Back when I was first thinking about filing this lawsuit, all the naysayers — there were a lot of naysayers — and the biggest comment that was made to us is, ‘You’ll never go anywhere, because you all of four individual cases agree to arbitration,’” attorney Jennifer Kinder said.
This arbitration clause, which is in Ticketmaster’s Terms of Use, essentially requires users to forfeit their right to sue the company. In August, Live Nation’s attempt to push plaintiffs into private arbitration failed in Skot Heckman et al v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. et al.
U.S. District Judge George Wu ruled that “the mass arbitration protocol creates a process that poses a serious risk of being fundamentally unfair to claimants.” The ruling may create an opportunity for the Swifties to avoid arbitration and lay the groundwork for other similar cases.
“To me, Live Nation is too big of a monopoly — they have too big of a stranglehold on the market,” Barfuss said. “I would love to see that broken up a little bit. And I don’t know that our lawsuit is the thing that would be the tipping point on that. But I feel like it’s just a drop in the bucket, and every drop in the bucket builds up against them.”
“Antitrust is unsexy and is unappealing and as boring a concept as it is — the truth is it’s just consumer protection,” Kinder said. “And there is nothing more important to you and I every day as consumers when we go to the grocery store, when we buy school supplies for our kids, when we bury our parents, when we buy a car–there is no more important issue than consumer protection.”
While fans continue their legal pursuit, some artists have attempted to address the issues themselves. Country singer Zach Bryan, after boycotting Ticketmaster and releasing an album titled “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster,” eventually returned to the platform for his upcoming tour.
The Cure chose to stick with Ticketmaster for its first U.S. tour in seven years but made tickets non-transferable and avoided dynamic pricing. Nonetheless, fans remained dissatisfied with fees and technical issues.
Singer Maggie Rogers took a different approach, conducting a pre-sale allowing fans to purchase tickets in person at their local box office. But those tactics were not feasible for a stadium tour like Taylor Swift’s, as Ticketmaster remains the dominant vendor for major venues in the U.S.
Politico has reported that the Department of Justice may file an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster in the coming months, though Ticketmaster has repeatedly denied engaging in antitrust behaviors.
As Swifties persist in their pursuit of justice, the spotlight on Ticketmaster’s ticket-selling practices continues to intensify, potentially ushering in a new era for ticket buyers and their quest for fairness.
