Look what you made her do, Taylor.
After being called out as missing in action by fellow Democrats during last week’s election, where Democrats lost control of the House, and by some New York constituents as well, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) leaped into action Tuesday night — over Taylor Swift.
The Queens-Bronx congresswoman called out Ticketmaster and Live Nation after Swift fans were left in tears by epic technical difficulties while trying to buy tickets for her upcoming US tour.
The Ticketmaster website appeared to crash or freeze as presale tickets for Swift’s 2023 52-date “The Era Tour” hit the market Tuesday, causing wait times of up to eight hours that ended in disappointment for hundreds of thousands of people.
Additionally, ticket sales for West Coast shows were delayed by three hours.
The concert sales giant blamed an “unprecedented historic demand” for the fiasco Tuesday, saying millions of fans had inundated the site to snag seats to the 32-year-old pop star’s first tour since 2018.
With the nation facing a recession, historic inflation and spikes in crime — especially in her hometown — Ocasio-Cortez, 33, took to Twitter Tuesday to renew Democratic calls to investigate the decade-old union between the two companies, which combined tickets, promotion, concert and management under a single roof.
Ocasio-Cortez, a New York City Democrat, spoke out after fans of the “Anti-Hero” singer were subject to a ticket-buying fiasco Tuesday.CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag
Swift’s upcoming 52-date US stadium tour will mark the first time the pop star has hit the road since two years before the pandemic.FilmMagic“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned [sic] in,” said the progressive firebrand who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, adding, “Break them up.”
Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who chairs the House of Representatives’ antitrust panel, demanded an investigation by the feds.
“@Ticketmaster’s excessive wait times and fees are completely unacceptable, as seen with today’s @taylorswift13 tickets,” Cicilline wrote on Twitter.
“It’s no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly.”
Ticketmaster claimed that would-be Swift presale ticket buyers outnumbered available tickets by two-to-one and millions of additional people jumped online to try to snag stubs for the stadium tour, which cost between $49 and $449.
AOC had been accused of being missing in action during last week’s midterm elections.GC Images
Swift recently released a new album, “Midnights.”FilmMagic“This caused some delays for fans which we know is frustrating and we worked as quickly as possible to adjust some on sale times to manage the volume, and queues are now flowing,” a spokesperson said.
The periodic outages and agonizing queue waits had left Swifties — and their parents, some of whom had taken a day off from work to try to snag seats — filled with bad blood toward the company.
“I’m a failure as a father,” wrote NextDraft newsletter author Dave Pell.
“The one time my daughter really needed me to come through for her, I ended up on the outside looking in, banished to the barren badlands of the Taylor Swift ticket waiting list wasteland.”
Some of the hundreds of thousands of people who did manage to score tickets tried to capitalize on the chaos by listing their seats for as much as $22,000 on secondhand sites like StubHub.
Swift, fresh off the October release of her “Midnights” album, had promised fans the new tour would showcase music from across her 16-year recording career.
Cicilline was one of the lawmakers who in 2021 asked the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to probe the company’s “monopoly” of ticket sales, which critics claim leads to higher ticket prices and artist and venue abuses.
The DOJ had found Live Nation flouted regulatory restrictions during the merger “by threatening venues and forcing the bundling of artists with ticketing services,” a letter signed by Cicilline and other representatives claimed.
Live Nation had agreed to a settlement with the feds in 2019 that banned it from strongarming venues into using it exclusively under the threat of withholding concerts.
With Post wires
