Ticketmaster blamed 'bot attacks' after its Taylor Swift ticket fiasco. Now feds are being pushed to enforce a law designed to fight such 'attacks.'
After Ticketmaster fumbled its sales of Taylor Swift's Eras stadium tour tickets, the company blamed"bot attacks" and fans for the meltdown.
People are also reading… Those tickets are then sold on third-party sites, often for much higher prices. The law bans the resale of tickets bought using bots, and people who illegally sell the tickets face a $16,000 fine. While the letter pointed specifically to Ticketmaster's Swift debacle, the senators also pointed to other recent examples, such as consumers reportedly trying to buy tickets to see Bob Dylan perform in Nashville this past March, only to be told that the tickets in their shopping cart no longer existed. The letter also cited a separate incident where 22,000 fans registered to buy Blake Shelton tickets but only a few hundred people walked away with them.
The letter acknowledged the January case, which was the first use of the BOTS Act, but asked the FTC why it hasn't done more to enforce against other possible cases of bot use. Last week, other members of Congress — Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., a longtime critic of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah — announced they would hold a hearing on the impact of Ticketmaster's dominant grip on the ticketing industry and"how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industry harms customers and artists alike."
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