Senate Warns Ticketmaster: ‘We’re Watching’ Beyoncé Ticket Sales After Taylor Swift Fiasco

The US Senate won’t let Ticketmaster break your soul.

The Senate Judiciary Committee issued a clear and ominous warning to Ticketmaster after Beyoncé announced her Renaissance World Tour.

“We are watching”, committee report wrote a critical tweet in Ticketmaster in response to a tweet that fans are bracing for a potential ticketing disaster.

Senators recently criticized Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, during a hearing over the ticketing fiasco for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, arguing that allegations Ticketmaster monopolized the industry after its merger with LiveNation in 2010.

Millions of fans waited in line for hours to pre-sale the tour, but were left with nothing due to disruptions and unclear pre-sale access rules. Ticketmaster ended up canceling the general sale due to what they called “unprecedented demand”.

The company had fans registered as “Verified Fans” for pre-sale and over 3.5 million did so, a record for the company.

“This whole concert ticket system is a mess — a monopoly mess,” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said during the hearing.

“I believe in capitalism, and to have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota). “You can’t have too much consolidation – something that, unfortunately for this country, is like an ode to Taylor Swift, I’ll say we know ‘All Too Good.’

Live Nation president Joe Berchtold agreed that Ticketmaster could “do a better job” but denied it was a monopoly.

After the merger with LiveNation, Ticketmaster owns approximately 200 major concert venues in the United States.

The company also sells about 70% of tickets to all major venues – mostly under exclusive contracts, according to a federal lawsuit filed by ticket buyers last year – and handles 500 million tickets annually in more than 30 countries.

Demand for Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour is expected to be extremely high.

Live Nation told fans via email this week that pre-sale registrations “already outnumber available tickets by more than 800%” in some cities.

“It is expected that many interested fans will not be able to get tickets because demand dramatically outstrips supply,” the email said.

The big city tour has already added new dates, including an additional show at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Ticketmaster claims they are changing the process this time around, stunning sales and using Verified Fan technology, which was also used on the Swift tour, to hopefully avoid stopping the virtual queue and kicking fans out of their place in line.

Beyhive will have to fight for tickets on different dates with a staggering new sales schedule.