Several Taylor Swift fans have ‘bad blood’ with Ticketmaster and are suing the ticket company following the controversy surrounding the singer’s ‘The Eras’ tour.
The lawsuit comes after another group of fans filed a lawsuit against the ticket company earlier this month, accusing it — along with its parent company Live Nation Entertainment — of fraud, price-fixing and antitrust violations, it reported Pitchfork.
The lawsuits stemmed from a chaotic pre-sale of Swift tour tickets that the company attributed to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory,” a fiasco that prompted Ticketmaster to abandon general sales of tickets after presale.
The federal class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges Ticketmaster “deliberately and intentionally misled millions of fans into believing it was blocking bots and scalpers from entering the presale,” Rolling Stone reported.
HuffPost has reached out to Ticketmaster for comment.
The lawsuit added that fans were unable to purchase tickets through the presale event due to heavy traffic — 14 million “unverified” users — and bots attending the events, the magazine reported.
The more than two dozen plaintiffs also alleged that Ticketmaster and Live Nation engaged in fraud and price-fixing, as well as “intentional misrepresentation” and false advertising, Pitchfork reported.
The lawsuit alleged that Ticketmaster claimed tickets were being sold at face value “when they weren’t” and rather allowed people who bought tickets to resell them during presales.
The ticket controversy will trigger an upcoming Senate hearing on the lack of competition in the industry, while The New York Times reported in November that the Justice Department had launched an investigation into Live Nation Entertainment.
Swift’s tour, her first in five years, will gross $591 million in ticket sales and made the “Anti-Hero” singer the biggest female touring artist in history, according to Billboard.
Ticketmaster accepted Swift’s request and offered some fans of the singer, who previously apologized to fans for the “heartbreaking” scenario, an “additional opportunity” to purchase up to two tickets for the tour through a presale at the beginning this month.
