At the announcement of Taylor Swift’s “The Era Tour” there were to be three sales, including a presale, Capital One presale, and a general sale. The first presale which started November 15 at 10 am had many flaws leading to a dreadful buying experience, including: placing the code entry page at the end of the queue meaning anyone could enter the line, 13 million more to be exact, which crashed the site for three hours. (Pictured) Another major issue were the scalpers, CBC.com says, “Resales are the root problem. If scalpers can be deterred from trying to capitalize on particular shows or tours, a system like Ticketmaster’s is much less likely to be overwhelmed by an army of ticket-gobbling bots.” Ticketmaster has been known to favor bots and scalpers as they even encourage resellers to price their tickets higher, further maximizing their own profits. Meaning, even if someone got a code and they made it through the queue they could be met with only a handful of tickets that are very expensive. This is due to a system Ticketmaster uses that is called “dynamic pricing.” However, Taylor and her team opted out of this, but Ticketmaster found a loophole that meant they were able to price nosebleeds at up to $450. Libby Frank says, “I think this a very greedy move by Ticketmaster because they will already make enough money by pricing tickets as they should be.”

It has been concluded by many that Ticketmaster gave out too many codes leading to all tickets selling out during the presales meaning that, for many, their only option is to pay hundreds or even thousands for a single ticket. Sami Hearn says, “I did not get a presale code, so I assumed that I would be able to get a ticket during the general sale, but I guess not.”

As it turned out, this negative feedback from fans has caught the attention of the government, who is now launching an investigation on Ticketmaster. According to CBC.com, “U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who chairs a subcommittee on competition and consumer rights, has promised a hearing “to examine the lack of competition in the ticketing industry,” while the Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation, the New York Times reported.”