Irish Examiner view: Taylor Swift ticket scramble shows up a problem with Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster and Live Nation effectively formed a monopoly that may have implications for Irish musicians and their fans

Taylor Swift with the Best Longform Video award at Sunday's MTV Europe Music Awards. The ticketing issues for TayTay's 2023 tour highlights the problem with Ticketmaster and Live Nation. Picture: Ian West/PA

The popularity of American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, particularly among girls and younger women, is proverbial, and those legions of fans have made her one of the biggest stars on the planet. 

Taylor Swift's latest album, Midnights, is a runaway success, selling in huge numbers on every platform available — it has broken the record for most-streamed album by a female artist with 185m streams, for instance, breaking the previous record (which Swift also held). 

Unsurprisingly, interest in Swift’s tour to promote the album in 2023 is at fever pitch. 

Taylor Swift arriving at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2022 in Dusseldorf last Sunday. Picture: PA

The only dates announced so far are in North America, though she is expected to tour Europe at some point.

However, when the tickets went on sale earlier this week in the US, the Ticketmaster website had multiple issues, slowing and freezing as well as malfunctioning in other ways, and many fans were left disappointed — and ticketless.

This has led to criticism from politicians in the US such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and calls for Ticketmaster to be split from Live Nation, the company it merged with more than 10 years ago.

The merger caused concerns at the time because it meant that the world’s largest concert promoter and the world’s largest ticket seller were essentially the same company.

Following the Taylor Swift ticket controversy this week, one US senator said Ticketmaster and Live Nation were operating a “near-monopoly”, calling on the US Department of Justice to investigate the level of competition in ticketing.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation also operate in Ireland, of course. 

Our indigenous music industry will keep an eye on developments in the US, knowing all too well that any action taken there will have implications for Irish musicians and their fans.