Taylor Swift fans are suing ticketing giant Ticketmaster alleging that the company “intentionally and purposefully” allowed scammers and bots to snap up tickets. They also accuse the company of placing artificially high prices on tickets.
26 plaintiffs are accusing Ticketmaster of “fraud, price-fixing, and antitrust violations”. The suit is requesting a civil fine for each violation. At $2,500 each this would add up for a stadium performance.
In November millions of Taylor Swift fans, also known as ‘Swifties’ couldn’t buy tickets for the long-awaited tour. The Ticketmaster site appeared to crash at the last step and those who had exclusive presale codes had to wait for hours in an online ‘queue’. Some even got error messages saying these codes were not valid. Ticketmaster then cancelled the sale by stating that there was “insufficient remaining ticket inventory”.
The lawsuit stated: “Millions of fans waited up to eight hours and were unable to purchase tickets as a result of insufficient ticket releases… Ticketmaster intentionally provided codes when it could not satisfy demands.”
Later tickets went on sale on resale sites for as much as $22,000 (£17,950). As Ticketmaster has it’s own resale market, they stood to profit.
“Ticketmaster was eager to allow this arrangement, as Ticketmaster is paid again in additional fees every time a ticket is resold,” the suit states.
Hollywood news site, Deadline shared a link to the full lawsuit which you can read here.
