LETTER: Indianapolis Swifties Get Ticketmastered, Yet Again!

The Protect Ticket Rights team has been tracking media coverage around the upcoming Indianapolis Taylor Swift shows as the Eras Tour comes to a close. The local Indy Star wrote a story recently about how Ticketmaster was disabling the ability of ticketholders to transfer their tickets to another fan in the final days in light of a disturbing pattern where fans are noticing their tickets have gone missing from their Ticketmaster accounts. By the time they notice, hackers have allegedly transferred the tickets out and have resold them to another person. The victim is the Ticketmaster customer. In the letter we sent to the Indy Star, below, we explain why fault rests on Ticketmaster. But rather than accepting responsibility, the company relies on deflection and scapegoating. Not only did Ticketmaster ruin the experience for millions of fans when Taylor Swift tickets first went on sale in November 2022, the company is closing out the Eras Tour by once again sticking it to the people who are forced into Ticketmaster’s substandard and unsecure technology.

There needs to be more competition and fairer terms in live event ticketing. Though there are other large ticketing companies possibly capable of selling and fulfilling tickets in a similar way, they don’t stand a chance at competing against Ticketmaster in this very rigged system (as detailed in the monopoly lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and 40 state attorneys general this year).  

LETTER TO THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR

The excitement for Taylor Swift Eras Tour in Indianapolis is palpable in “Last-minute Taylor Swift tickets in Indianapolis? Good luck with Ticketmaster transfer rule.”

Fans looking to buy a last-minute ticket or sell tickets they already bought will be disappointed. Ticketmaster is restricting ticketholders’ ability to transfer their tickets in the days leading up to the show as part of a new effort to crack down on hackers logging into Ticketmaster accounts using stolen account information and stealing tickets before the account holder notices. Instead of accepting responsibility for its own failures following a data breach affecting 500 million accounts, the company is blaming others. Ticketmaster could have required a password reset to prevent unauthorized logins, but instead, is disabling transfers and robbing fans of their ability to buy tickets offered for resale by other ticketholders.

Fortunately, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita joined the DOJ’s lawsuit against the monopoly given there is no shortage of evidence of Live Nation/Ticketmaster maneuvering to abuse fans and making it difficult for them to shop for tickets from another ticket seller. Hackers are stealing tickets, which is bad enough, but the fact that Ticketmaster didn’t do enough to prevent it is unacceptable.