US Congress to hold hearing following Ticketmaster's Taylor Swift ticket debacle

23 November 2022, 16:31 | Written by Cerys Kenneally

(News)

(Taylor Swift)

Following Ticketmaster's poor management of Taylor Swift's the Eras Tour ticket sale last week, it's been revealed that a US Senate antitrust panel is due to hold a hearing about the lack of competition in the ticketing industry.

According to Variety, the hearing, which will examine the lack of competition in the ticketing industry, was confirmed yesterday (22 November) by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mike Lee (R-UT). The hearing date and list of witnesses is expected to be revealed in the future.

News of the hearing comes after Ticketmaster cancelled the public sale date for Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour after millions of fans crashed the site, leaving a huge amount of people without tickets, during the pre-sale. Swift responded last Friday (18 November) on socials, saying that she and her team "asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could." Swift also wrote that it "really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them."

Ticketmaster then apologised for the "terrible experience" through a blog post, and then a bunch of Swift fans that are also lawyers made a group chat called "Vigilante Legal", and have been working together to figure out ideas on how to take action against Ticketmaster.

Swift announced The Eras tour at the start of the month. Currently, there's only US dates available with support from Paramore, Phoebe Bridgers, Haim, MUNA, girl in red, Beabadoobee, GAYLE, Gracie Abrams and OWENN.

Taylor Swift is yet to announce international dates for The Eras Tour, but did confirm at the start of November that they'll be "announced as soon as we can."