The pain was heaven for Taylor Swift fans who snagged tickets to her Eras Tour during the Tuesday presale, but other fans are calling Ticketmaster the problem.

Fans reported long wait times and website crashes, and some were not even able to purchase tickets, during the first presale opportunity.

Ticketmaster responded to fans with a statement on Twitter, saying in part that “there has been historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up to buy tickets,” telling fans “thank you for your patience as (Ticketmaster continues) managing this huge demand.”

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What is a monopoly?

“A monopoly is essentially when you have a market where there’s only one seller of a good or a service,” said Kenneth Ford, an assistant professor of finance at Wake Forest University. “So in this case, it seems as if Ticketmaster is the only entity or business providing access to tickets directly to consumers.”

In 2010, Ticketmaster merged with concert promoter Live Nation. “When Ticketmaster joins with Live Nation (…) and that concert promoter promotes every major concert, and they only use Ticketmaster to sell tickets, then they effectively act as a monopoly in this case,” said Ford.

Morgan Harper is the director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project. It is one of the organizations leading a campaign called “Break Up Ticketmaster.” The coalition is trying to raise awareness about the monopolistic practices of Ticketmaster and get the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the 2010 merger.

“The Taylor Swift tour and the whole ticketing situation with that is just one example of, there’s a lot of unpredictability for the consumer on how much a ticket is going to cost,” said Harper. “There are a lot of fees. In some cases, Ticketmaster is charging fees that are 78% of the face value of the ticket, and you have no idea what to expect.”

If fans are negatively impacted by Ticketmaster’s practices, why do artists sell tickets through the company? Harper said they may not have much of a choice.

“There are very few artists now who can earn revenue, given that Ticketmaster and Live Nation have vertically integrated,” said Harper. “So they control both artists’ management agencies, live event venues themselves, in addition to the ticketing market, and it’s just really tough to compete.”

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