New Jersey State Bar Foundation - The Legal Eagle
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September 2nd, 2023
Ticketmaster's Practices Take the Spotlight
Seeing Taylor Swift live with thousands of other “Swifties” wasn’t supposed to be impossible. In November 2022, when tickets for Swift’s “Eras” tour went on sale, Ticketmaster customers encountered website crashes, sparse availability, unusable presale access codes, and outrageous prices.
Many fans, locked out of Ticketmaster, flocked to secondary sites to find tickets as high as $22,700 each, according to an article in The Guardian. After a flood of complaints, in January 2023 more than 300 fans (at last count) signed on to a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court against Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s parent company. The plaintiffs allege the company engages in anti-competitive actions and predatory consumer practices, in violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law, which prohibits false advertising and illegal business practices. They are seeking $2,500 in damages for each violation of the California law.