“It’s a real elegant way to oversell. That’s what they did—they oversold,” Sheffield said on Sunday in an interview with Radio Fórmula. He added that the fine Ticketmaster Mexico faces could be as much as 10% of the company’s profits last year in Mexico, constituting a fine of $1 million. Sheffield said the final amount has yet to be determined.
This situation is the latest woe for Ticketmaster, which faced so many issues from fans for its “dynamic pricing” of Taylor Swift tickets that multiple attorneys general promised to address the issue. On Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General’s Office issued a statement noting that “a new round of ticket opportunities will be coming to PA consumers who received a pre-sale code this month.”
Penalties after the fact and temporary fixes don’t address a larger issue my colleague Cara Zelaya touched on in her piece about Ticketmaster screwing over Taylor Swift fans:
“This isn’t the first Ticketmaster trainwreck, and it likely won’t be the last. If you look up Ticketmaster on Wikipedia, the bulk of their entry is a list of controversies they have been involved in—from anti-competition claims spearheaded by Pearl Jam filing a complaint with the U.S Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1994 to Ticketmaster deceptively charging customers $9 a month for a “rewards program” to shadowy partnerships with ticket resellers.”
Ticketmaster has a long history of bad behavior, and its merger with LiveNation in 2010 hasn’t exactly helped matters. Add Swifties and Bad Bunny’s passionate fans around the globe, and maybe something will change so that buying a ticket to the World’s Hottest Tour—or Eras Tour—isn’t a gamble in which the only sound bet is that Ticketmaster will reap the financial rewards.
Do you have a Ticketmaster story? Sound off in the comments.
