Taylor Swift Fans Face Off Against Ticketmaster In Court Over ‘Eras Tour’ Ticket Disaster

On Monday, Taylor Swift fans went to court in Los Angeles against Ticketmaster after the chaotic and disastrous sale of Eras Tour tickets.

In mid-November, presale tickets to Swift’s Eras Tour began for “Verified Fans” who had been sent presale codes by Ticketmaster. When the sales began, 1.4 million “verified fans” flocked to the website and were met with a malfunctioning queue due to the immense demand. Capital One card holders, who had also been promised presale options, faced the same struggles, leading Ticketmaster to cancel sales to the general public.

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Ticketmaster revealed that 3.5 million people had signed up to buy tickets, the largest registration in history, completely overloading the website. The ticket company also said that more than two million tickets were sold on the first day of sales, being the new record for tickets sold in a single day for one artist.

The day in court was spent as a status hearing where a class action status was discussed but not yet set upon. The upset fans are asking Ticketmaster to award them $2,500 each per violation for damages.

However, lead plaintiff Julie Barfuss‘ biggest hope is that this case will help lower ticket prices for every fan to see their favorite artist live.

“I tried in total of 41 times that first day to get tickets. It kicks you out into the queue and you’re back in and then I kept getting errors,” she said. “Then, I again spent a couple of hours trying to do it the second day. When I finally got in and was going to buy tickets, they were like $1,400.”

And it’s not like fans could simply go to another website, as Ticketmaster was the only legitimate site to buy tickets, leading to the infamous markups and hidden fees. The lawsuit claims Ticketmaster does this on purpose to control the sales market by purposely misleading fans. (The tickets are now available on re-seller sites.)

“We want answers,” plaintiff Joe Akmakjian said. “We want to know why it happened. We want to know if could it have been prevented. If it was preventable, why wasn’t it? What can we do to make the live event industry more accessible to the average consumer? I see this as a predatory monopoly, and if we can have a monopoly for something fun like sporting events and concerts, I’m worried that that will pave the way for monopolies in other industries, like health care and transportation that really affects the way people live day to day.”