Taylor Swift Ticket Sales Crash Ticketmaster, Ignite Fan Backlash, Renew Calls To Break Up Service: “Ticketmaster Is A Monopoly”

Fans trying to purchase seats for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which went on sale this morning, were irate at Ticketmaster for long waits, technical glitches and outright site crashes.

Some compared it to The Hunger Games. Overwhelming demand from the same fans who had rocketed 10 songs from Swift’s most recent release Midnights to the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 — a first-time feat in the chart’s history — caused what Ticketmaster characterized as “intermittent issues with the site.” Potential ticket buyers complained of waiting hours with little to show for it. Others said they were being automatically logged out without being allowed to complete their purchases.

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Rolling Stone reported that “As of 11 a.m. on Tuesday, the site was experiencing major issues, with fans either completely logged out or in a queue 2,000-plus people strong that appeared frozen.”

One famous Millennial echoed decades-long calls for legal action against the service.

House Rep. Alexandra Oscasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter this morning, “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s [sic] merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in. Break them up.”

A fan added context to the Congresswoman’s call by replying with a photo of Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard on Capitol Hill in 1995 reminding that “@PearlJam were aware of these monopolistic practices back in 1995. They even testified before congress regarding the issue.” The group at the time also filed a complaint against the ticketing giant with the U.S. Justice Department and tried to set up an alternate ticket-buying channel.

Ticketmaster posted several Twitter updates this morning as the site’s issues escalated. Among them was advising fans not to log in through the Ticketmaster web site, which was experiencing “unprecendeted demand,” but to initiate purchases through the presale links texted to them.

The ticketing service pushed back presales for a number of West Coast cities from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. today. A presale for Capitol One cardmembers was pushed to tomorrow.

It’s not the only time in the past year that fans have complained about outages on the site. Last December, Adele fans trying to secure seats via a presale for her tour encountered glitches. Ticketmaster, at the time, said it was the result of an Amazon Web Services outage.

Swift will begin the U.S. leg of The Eras Tour — which now totals 52-dates — on March 18 in Arizona and wrap it on August 5 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.

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