Ticketmaster is a SCAM and I'm SO done pretending it's not đđď¸
Okay besties, grab your iced coffees and charge your phones because I have a *whole* lot to say and my blood pressure is already through the roof. If youâve ever tried to buy concert tickets in the last, like, five years, you already KNOW the struggle is real. But letâs be real: Ticketmaster isnât just a struggle. Ticketmaster is a whole vibe of betrayal, rage, and financial ruin wrapped in a poorly designed app. And Iâm not talking about just any bad experience. Iâm talking about the *Taylor Swift Eras Tour presale disaster* that literally broke the internet and made us all feel like we were fighting for our lives in a Black Friday sale from hell.
Remember that day? November 15, 2022. I was in a group chat with my besties, we had our presale codes, we were READY. We had our laptops open, our phones ready, incense burning for good luck. And then⌠nothing. The site crashed. The queue didnât move. My code stopped working. I saw âSorry, no tickets availableâ like 47 times. And then the resale prices started showing up for $10,000. TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. For a seat in the nosebleeds where you need binoculars to see the stage. I literally cried. And Iâm not even embarrassed to admit it. That day, we all lost a little bit of our souls.
And the worst part? Ticketmaster didnât even apologize. They gave us a half-hearted tweet like, âWeâre experiencing high demand.â GIRL. HIGH DEMAND? The entire planet wanted those tickets. You knew that. You planned for that. But you still let the system crash because youâre more worried about making your shareholders happy than making actual music fans happy.
Letâs talk about the fees. Oh my god, the FEES. You go to buy a $50 concert ticket, and by the time you check out, itâs $120. And you ask, âWhere did all that money go?â And Ticketmaster is like, âUm, service fee, processing fee, convenience fee, facility fee, dynamic pricing fee, fee fee.â Like, make it make sense. I paid $20 in fees just for the privilege of paying more money. Thatâs not a service. Thatâs a hostage situation. Youâre holding my favorite artist hostage and I have to pay a ransom every time.
And donât even get me started on the verification process. You have to register EARLY, confirm your email, confirm your phone number, link your credit card, sell your firstborn, swear a blood oath, and then you still might not get a code. And if you do get a code? You better be ready to click faster than a caffeinated squirrel because tickets sell out in literal seconds. Itâs not a concert. Itâs a Hunger Games audition.
Remember when The Cure tickets went on sale? The band literally forced Ticketmaster to lower fees and refund fans. ICONIC. But why does it take the actual band to step in for Ticketmaster to act like a decent company? They should have been doing that from the start. Instead, theyâre over there raking in millions while weâre over here fighting for our lives just to see a show.
And the resale problem? Oh honey, donât even get me started. Ticketmaster literally has its OWN resale platform where scalpers can sell tickets for 10x the price, and Ticketmaster gets a cut of that too. Theyâre double-dipping. Theyâre the villain and the hero in their own movie. They create the problem and then sell you the solution. Thatâs like a firefighter starting a fire and then charging you to put it out.
Also, letâs talk about the UI. The app is a mess. Every time I try to buy tickets, it takes me through like 12 different screens, asks me if I want to join a waitlist, then offers me parking, then tries to sell me merch, then asks for my birthday, then crashes. And when it finally works, I get a ticket that looks like it was printed on a receipt from 1998. Iâm not paying $200 for a PDF that looks like it was made in Microsoft Paint.
And donât even try to call customer service. I waited on hold for three hours once. THREE HOURS. And when someone finally answered, they said, âSorry, we canât help you with that.â And then hung up. I felt like I was in a nightmare. A very expensive, very loud, very disappointing nightmare.
The thing is, we all know the solution. Itâs not rocket science. Stop letting bots buy tickets. Stop dynamic pricing. Stop gouging us with fees. Let us transfer tickets freely. Actually invest in your infrastructure so your site doesnât crash during big sales. But they wonât do it because they donât have to. They have a monopoly. They own the venues, they own the ticketing, they own the resale. They have us by the wallet and they know it.
The government finally started looking into them, and Iâm like, âFINALLY.â The DOJ filed a lawsuit to break up the monopoly. And Iâm sat. Iâm ready. I want to see Ticketmaster in a courtroom like, âYour honor, we charge $25 convenience fees for printing a ticketâ and the judge is like, âGuilty.â
But until that happens, weâre stuck. Weâre stuck refreshing pages, hoping for a miracle, crying over service fees, and praying that our favorite artists go on tour before we go broke. Weâre in a toxic relationship with Ticketmaster and we canât leave because theyâre the only option in town.
So hereâs what Iâm saying: we need to demand better. We need to support artists who fight for their fans. We need to push for legislation that breaks up this monopoly. We need to stop accepting that paying $500 for a
Final Thoughts
After decades of watching Ticketmaster wield its monopoly like a cudgelâfrom the Pearl Jam hearings to the Taylor Swift fiascoâitâs clear that the problem isnât just broken technology, but a broken market that has normalized predatory fees. The company has perfected the art of making itself the villain while leaving artists and fans to feud over the scraps, a dynamic that antitrust scrutiny alone cannot fix without enforceable transparency. My conclusion is blunt: until we sever the vertical integration of primary ticketing and resale, every âsold-outâ show will remain a hostage situation for the very people who make live music possible.