Swifties and lawmakers call for an end to Ticketmaster's reign as ticket sales for The Eras Tour crash site

Hell hath no fury like a Swiftie scorned. With yesterday’s presale for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, Ticketmaster saw an unprecedented demand for tickets for the 52 concert dates, leaving the site glitchy and shutting down in what became a tumultuous day for Swift fans. The widespread complications spurred legions of prospective buyers and even politicians to call for breaking up the ticket retailer.

“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s [sic] merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “Break them up.”

Other representatives such as New Jersey’s Bill Pascrell (who’s been a longtime opponent of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger), Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, and Rhode Island’s David Cicilline echoed Ocasio-Cortez’s sentiment on social media.

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Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal also took to Twitter to decry Ticketmaster’s monopoly, calling for a legal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Taylor Swift’s tour sale is a perfect example of how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger harms consumers by creating a near-monopoly,” he writes. “I’ve long urged DOJ to investigate the state of competition in the ticketing industry. Consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior.”

With many fans left waiting hours for their shot to buy tickets, yesterday’s pre-sale for Swift’s tour has taken the conversation around the ever-expensive and competitive nature of buying concert tickets to new heights. It’s been a long building discussion, with every big tour (Adele, Harry Styles, Bruce Springsteen, Paramore, the list goes on and on) reprising complaints about Ticketmaster’s pricing and tiered access again and again.

Last month, President Joe Biden spoke on the exploitative nature of exorbitant processing fees for concert sales, stating that his administration is looking to bring an end to them.

Now if the Swifties can get the ball rolling before Beyoncé tickets go on sale, that would be great.