Ticketmaster has one job—selling tickets to music fans. Yet it couldn’t handle Taylor Swift fans’ demand for her concert yesterday (Nov. 15).

Shortly after the pre-sales for the singers’ 2023 Eras tour began for “verified fans,” users were experiencing long queues that were paused when more than 2,000 were in line, and getting their codes rejected. Instead of tickets, they were getting messages saying the site is experiencing “technical glitches.”

To access pre-sale tickets, fans had to register with their names, email addresses, and contact numbers last week. Ticketmaster vetted, selected, and sent codes to those who earned access. The process wasn’t clear, but people who have worked on tours suggest ticketing companies running these programs mine their own sales records, along with publicly available data such as social-media history, to verify would-be buyers’ identities, as the Wall Street Journal reported. But all the preparedness didn’t hold up as waves of fans logged on.

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There’s also a consortium of organizations, including American Economic Liberties Project, Sports Fans Coalition, Fight Corporate Monopolies, More Perfect Union, Fan Freedom, the Consumer Federation of America, the National Consumers League, and the Artist Rights Alliance, who’re actively lobbying to end the company’s massive hold on the ticketing industry with their Break Up Ticketmaster campaign.

After Live Nation reported earnings were up nearly 50% compared to their previous most profitable year in 2019, the coalition said it’s built “an empire off of scamming consumers with bogus service fees, squeezing artists out of their hard-earned revenue, gatekeeping independent venue owners from the market if they don’t agree to Live Nation’s terms, and other restrictive practices,” in a Nov. 4 statement. “To build a vibrant, competitive live events market, the Department of Justice should listen to the thousands of fans, artists, and advocates that are urging them to break up this uncontrollable middleman.”

The group has managed to get 15,000 letters sent to the Department of Justice to separate the two entities.

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