Amy Klobuchar Seizes On Taylor Swift Snafu To Press Ticketmaster On Concerns Over Lack Of Industry Competition

deadline.com:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the chair of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, fired off a letter to Ticketmaster on Thursday amid concerns that the outages on its site for Taylor Swift concerts reflect a lack of competition in the business.

In a letter to Live Nation Entertainment CEO Michael Rapino, Klobuchar wrote that she had “serious concerns about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers.

Reports about system failures, increasing fees, and complaints of conduct that violate the consent decree Ticketmaster is under suggest that Ticketmaster continues to abuse its market positions.” Klobuchar has been a critic of the concert ticket market, and argued that Ticketmaster’s “power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services.

That can result in the types of dramatic service failures we saw this week, where consumers are the ones that pay the price.” A Ticketmaster spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.