Senate Warns Ticketmaster ‘We’re Watching’ Beyoncé Tour Ticket Sales Following Taylor Swift Debacle

The Senate Judiciary Committee warned Ticketmaster that they’ll be watching what happens with ticket sales for Beyoncé’s recently announced Renaissance tour.

The committee’s Twitter account said, “We’re watching, [Ticketmaster],” The headline announced the tour. Following a well-publicized catastrophe with ticket sales, the warning comes shortly after. Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour last November.

We’Re watching, ahref=”https://twitter.com/Ticketmaster?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@Ticketmaster. https://t.co/LuWjoXrWX4

— Senate Judiciary Committee (@JudiciaryDems) February 2, 2023

Multiple senators blasted Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, during a hearing about the ticket sales fiasco. This was spurred by allegations against Ticketmaster. Monopolized After merging with Live Nation, the industry was transformed in 2010.

When fans tried buying Tickets The entire website crashed for the Eras Tour after people pre-registered. This caused some people to wait in line for hours and never get tickets. The general sale was eventually cancelled due to high demand.

Michael Rapino, CEO of Live Nation, stated that they weren’t equipped to handle the demand Swift concert tickets. 

“We invited a million and a half on that day to come and buy those tickets, but it’s kind of like having a party,” He a href=”https://www.dailywire.com/news/taylor-swift-finally-breaks-silence-after-eras-tour-ticket-fiasco”>explained. “Everybody crashed that door at the same time with 3.5 billion requests.”

“We sold 2 million tickets, the most we’ve ever sold in one day in history, and another million tickets of other artists on the same day,” Rapino continued. “So although we regret it was a slowdown in some queues and some error codes for a short period for some fans, we did manage to recover.”

“This whole concert ticket system is a mess — it’s a monopolistic mess,” During the hearing, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D–CT) spoke.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) agreed. “I believe in capitalism, and to have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition,” She spoke. “You can’t have too much consolidation – something that unfortunately for this country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know ‘All Too Well.’”

Live Nation anticipates that ticket demand for the Renaissance tour will be high, but they’ve put some new systems in place to help avoid what happened before. 

This week, the company sent an email to its fans stating that there were a record number of pre-sale registers. “already exceed the number of available tickets by more than 800%” Some locations may not be available Per The New York Post. 

“It is expected that many interested fans may not be able to get tickets because demand drastically exceeds supply,” The email stated. 

Some measures used to facilitate the buying process include staggered sales and Verified Fan technology, which was also used for Swift’s concert tickets. This is to prevent tickets being resold at high prices by third-party sites.