Senate Judiciary Committee Warns Ticketmaster Ahead of Beyoncé Tour

The Senate Judiciary Committee sent Ticketmaster an ominous note ahead of the sale of Beyoncé’s highly anticipated world tour.

Just one week after the Committee questioned Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, about the Taylor Swift Eras Tour fiascothey made their position clear Thursday on how they expect the monopoly to handle Beyoncé’s next sale.

“We’re watching, @Ticketmaster,” they wrote ominously in a tweet attached to a CNN video reporting how their fanbase, the Beyhive, is already anticipating another meltdown.

Like Swifties, Beyhive had to sign up for a Verified Fan pre-sale code, which not all fans will receive. Those who receive one will wait in a virtual line on the selected date to compete with other fans for the highly coveted seats.

Ticketmaster has already announced that demand from Group A, which includes nine cities, has reached “more than 800 percent” of booked tickets booked for sale and pre-sale code registration doesn’t even close until noon EST on Friday. .

“We’re watching, @Ticketmaster,” they ominously wrote in a tweet attached to a CNN video reporting how their fanbase, the Beyhive, is already anticipating another crash.

Group B has until February 9, while Group C has until February 16 to register and potentially receive a pre-sale access code.

Unlike the Taylor Swift sale, where tickets for all tour dates were delivered to pre-sale code holders at once, Ticketmaster has designed an updated release schedule to ensure Beyoncé fans don’t miss out. with the same issue, where the virtual lines were briefly bogged down and fans were being kicked out of the queue.

Instead, the three BeyHive groups will battle for tickets on different dates.

Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z signed a $200 million contract with Live Nation in 2017 that lasts 10 years and guarantees at least three albums, tours and music release.

“For 9 years, we’ve traveled the world producing historic musical experiences,” the rapper said at the time. This renewed partnership is a testament to our long-standing relationship and the talented people at Live Nation. Over the next 10 years, we will continue to redefine the landscape of live events.”

As for the Taylor Swift fiasco, Ticketmaster blamed bots and “historically unprecedented demand” for tickets.

A statement at the time read: ‘The Eras [Tour] The sale made one thing clear: Taylor Swift is an unstoppable force and continues to set records. We strive to make buying tickets as easy as possible for the fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets for the Eras Tour. We want to share information to help explain what happened.

Ticketmaster explained that fans were required to sign up for its Verified Fan system before sales began, which is designed to “help manage high-demand shows by identifying real humans and weeding out bots.”

The statement continued: ‘Based on fan interest in the record, we knew this was going to be big. More than 3.5 million people pre-registered for Taylor’s Verified Fan, which is the largest registration ever.

Ticketmaster blamed bots and “unprecedented” demand for Taylor Swift tickets for last year’s crash and has put in place more provisions, including staggering dates and dividing Beyoncé fans into groups, to help prevent another fiasco.

“The high demand for Taylor’s tour influenced the artist team’s decision to add additional dates, doubling the tour and the number of tickets available so more fans could attend the shows.

“Historically, about 40 percent of invited fans actually show up and buy tickets, with most buying an average of three tickets. So, working with the team of artists, around 1.5 million people were invited to participate in the sale of the 52 show dates, including the 47 sold by Ticketmaster.

‘The remaining 2 million Verified Fans have been placed on the waiting list.’

Adding Taylor’s claim “broke records and parts of our website,” the statement continued: “Historically, working with Verified Fan invite codes has worked as we’ve been able to manage the volume coming into the site to purchase tickets.

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“However, this time the staggering number of bot attacks, as well as fans without invite codes, drove unprecedented traffic to our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – four [times] our previous peak.

Shortly after the Taylor Swift meltdown, Bad Bunny faced disaster: Hundreds of fans were turned away at a Mexico City venue after being told their tickets purchased through Ticketmaster weren’t valid.

Since the monopoly was questioned by the Senate Committee, the company issued a one-liner apology to Swift.

We apologize to the fans. We apologize to Ms. Swift. We need to do better and we will do better,” said Joe Berchtold, LiveNation’s president and chief financial officer.