Hundreds of Taylor Swift fans have won a key court victory allowing them to move forward with a blockbuster lawsuit over Ticketmaster’s botched sale of Eras Tour tickets three years ago.
The lawsuit was the first in a series of cases brought by Swifties in the wake of Ticketmaster’s infamous Eras Tour presale in November 2022. A previous version of the complaint was dismissed this past May as legally deficient — but in a Monday (Nov. 24) order, a California federal judge says revised antitrust claims against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation are now strong enough to survive.
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Citing the Department of Justice’s ongoing effort to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, 357 of Swift’s fans claim the companies’ monopolistic control over both ticketing and major concert venues has shut out all competition and allowed them to operate a shoddy sales platform. The lawsuit says this led to a “massive disaster” when Ticketmaster crashed amid overwhelming traffic from bots and scalpers during the Eras Tour presale, depriving many fans of the chance to buy face-value tickets.
Ticketmaster argued there’s an inherent problem with the Swifties relying on the U.S. government’s antitrust suit for their monopoly claims, as the DOJ case focuses on Live Nation’s deals with arenas and amphitheaters, not the stadiums where Swift performed her Eras Tour. But the Monday court ruling rejected this argument.
“None of these allegations clearly indicate that the government action excludes conduct related to stadiums,” wrote U.S. District Judge George H. Wu. “Furthermore, while noticeably absent from the [complaint] is the word ‘stadium,’ the court fails to see any meaningful distinction between arenas, amphitheaters and stadiums that would render baseless plaintiffs’ reliance on the government action.”
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Judge Wu is thus allowing the antitrust claims to move forward into evidence discovery, though he trimmed away other breach of contract and fraud claims brought by the Swifties. That part of the lawsuit claimed Ticketmaster lied when it promised to keep bots and scalpers away from the presale, and that the platform falsely said it would give priority access to fans who’d bought merch for Swift’s Midnights album or tickets to the star’s canceled 2020 Lover Fest.
The issue with the contract claims, says Judge Wu, is that Ticketmaster never actually made these promises in any enforceable agreement. And according to the judge, the consumer fraud claims don’t work because Ticketmaster believed it was telling the truth when it advertised the terms of the Eras Tour presale.
“Plaintiffs have failed to sufficiently allege that Defendants made promises with no intent to perform,” writes Judge Wu. “Plaintiffs’ reliance on the aftermath of the presales (i.e., defendants’ purported failure to deliver on the promises they made) cannot support a plausible fraud theory.”
A lawyer for the Swift fans, Jennifer Kinder, said in a statement to Billboard on Tuesday (Nov. 25) that they are “ecstatic to finally be moving towards our day in court.”
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“Ticketmaster has spent the past two years trying every legal trick to have their case dismissed. Judge Wu has ruled they will not be able to escape a jury trial,” said Kinder. “The people of Los Angeles will decide the legality of Ticketmaster’s monopoly.”
Reps for Ticketmaster did not return a request for comment. Swift’s team did not return a request for comment either, though the star previously had some choice words for Ticketmaster when the presale imploded back in November 2022.
“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” wrote Swift in an Instagram statement at the time. “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.”
The chaotic presale for Swift’s Eras Tour, which wrapped last year with a record-breaking haul of more than $2 billion in face-value ticket sales over a two-year run, spurred multiple legal actions against both Ticketmaster and brokers who resold tickets at massive markups on the secondary market.
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The debacle also led to congressional scrutiny and sparked renewed interest in the DOJ’s attempt to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which is set for a trial this spring. The companies have denied that they’ve done anything to stifle competition, either in the Eras Tour ticket market or elsewhere.
Earlier this year, two people were criminally charged with stealing and reselling hundreds of Eras Tour tickets. One of these individuals copped to the charges last month, and the second pled guilty on Tuesday (Nov. 25).
