The Pop Corporation

Say what you want about the insanity of stan-level fans, but occasionally, they do something you can’t help but applaud. When super fanatics aren’t doxxing or cancelling people over a decade old cock-up, they can unify and actually try for something quite noble. This time, it’s Taylor Swift’s Swifties, who are basically taking Ticketmaster to court.

We don’t even care if it’s completely frivolous – the fact that this will be boiling their piss is enough for us.

This is all over the ticket debacle surrounding the ‘Eras’ tour for Swift, and fans from 13 states in the US dropped a lawsuit at Los Angeles County Court, alleging that Ticketmaster violated the California Cartwright Act and the California Unfair Competition Law during its “verified fan” pre-sale. Ridiculous waiting times, online queues, outages to the ticketing website were perhaps expected, but fans weren’t willing to accept that hyper-inflated prices on tickets were appearing on Ticketmaster’s own resale sites before sale even began.

Michelle Sterioff filed her case in December of last year, weeks after the mayhem, and her lawyers said that the company had “knowingly misled millions of fans.” However, the case was initially dropped while both sides tried to work something out. According to papers though, they’ve got ’til Jan 31st 2024 to come up with something, and that’s a matter of weeks away.

In her initial complaint, Sterioff and her lawyers claimed, “Ticketmaster intentionally and purposefully misled millions of fans into believing it would prevent bots and scalpers from participating in the presales.” They added; “However, millions of fans were unable to purchase tickets during the TaylorSwiftTix Presale and the Capital One Presale, due in large part to unprecedented website traffic caused by Ticketmaster allowing 14 million unverified Ticketmaster users and a ‘staggering’ number of bots to participate in the presales.”

Another Taylor Swift supporter, Julie Barfuss, has an active federal class action lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster also.

Their complaint says: “Because artists like Taylor Swift have to go through Ticketmaster, their fans do as well. This means virtually all major music concert ticket sales in California and the United States go through Ticketmaster’s Primary Ticket Platform.”

Plaintiffs also allege that Ticketmaster “allows scalpers to buy up tickets over buyers who actually plan to attend the performances,” and that the company “has stated that it has taken steps to address this issue, but in reality, has taken steps to make additional profit from the scalped tickets.”

That’s not all. Tennessee Attorney General, who goes by the name of Jonathan Skrmetti, launched their own investigation into Ticketmaster after this whole mess, saying: “We received a number of complaints and there’s been significant press coverage that the ticket sale process did not go smoothly.”

“It’s my job to ensure that the consumer protection laws and antitrust laws in Tennessee are being honoured.”

Two US senators wanted answers from the Federal Trade Commission too, with a particular focus on anti-bot laws, noting that other tours had suffered from similar issues.

More on this when we hear more.