Ticketmaster’s problem with price-gouging

Taylor Swift's concert presale reminded many of the frustrating and tedious process of ticket buying.

Transcript

00:00Taylor Swift fans crashed Ticketmaster when the pre-sale for her upcoming Eras tour opened today

00:05But we need to talk about the ticket company's price gouging and what the government is doing about it

00:09While hordes of fans took to Twitter to bash on Ticketmaster for its service failure

00:13Others decided it was time to renew calls to break the monopoly

00:16Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted this reminding followers of the company's 2010 merger with Live Nation and

00:23Representative Ilhan Omar echoed her calls

00:25Ticketmaster controls roughly 70% of live event ticketing and doesn't allow artists or venues to set their own prices on top of that fees can

00:32Be as high as 78 percent of the ticket price

00:35The company sometimes even holds back as many as 90% of the tickets for the secondary market

00:39Others are bought in bulk by resellers who use bots to resell them at a markup

00:43The president himself addressed the issue last month saying he had ordered his administration to quote crackdown on unfair and deceptive fees

00:50He also issued an executive order in July of 2021 that takes aim at a variety of monopolies though

00:56It's unclear what results if any that might yield