Ticketmaster Faces Fraud Lawsuit From Taylor Swift Fans After Eras Tour Ticket Fiasco

Ticketmaster has been sued by Swifties weeks after they canceled the sale of Taylor Swift's Eras tour tickets.

The sales barely lasted a few days after the sites used for ticket purchases were overwhelmed by unprecedented traffic from both eager fans and bots. The websites crashed on several occasions during the sales period, leaving many fans unable to purchase tickets.

In the wake of the fiasco, several Swifties banded together to sue the ticketing agency, accusing them of misrepresenting their services and colluding with scalpers for their own profit.

Read on to learn more.

According to The New York Post, Ticketmaster has been sued by over two dozen Swifties following its botched ticket sales for the multi-Grammy award winner Eras tour last month. The angry fans filed a 33-page lawsuit in a Los Angeles court on Friday, claiming that the agency acted fraudulently and intentionally misrepresented their services.

The agency was given the deal by Swift to sell her tickets for the upcoming tour but was met with a "historically enormous" demand during its presale events. This led to website problems and lengthy wait times that left many eager fans without a ticket despite their willingness to buy one.

To make matters worse, Ticketmaster decided to end the general public on-sale of Swift tour tickets a few days after they started selling. Fans unable to get tickets online were forced to seek them from resellers, who were quickly listing them for thousands compared to the less expensive prices listed on the site.

One of the complainants in the suit, Julie Barfuss, had earlier tweeted that she had spent several days trying to get tickets to the upcoming tour using one of the recommended sites.

In a short clip she uploaded on her social media platform, she showed receipts for all the charges made on her account by the site, totaling over $10,000, but she was still not allowed to purchase any tickets.

Following the filing of the lawsuit, Barfuss spoke with the Post, sharing more insight into how she ended up without a ticket.

She said, "I feel like Ticketmaster completely screwed up on this one. I did everything the way they asked. I was a verified fan. I followed their instructions, logged on early, using my laptop (not a mobile device), waiting a LONG time….FINALLY got tickets in my cart, only to have the site crash, got thrown back in the queue, could not get a transaction to go through."

Ticketmaster issued a lengthy apology to the Swifties, blaming an overwhelming surge and bot attacks for creating a massive demand that locked out many fans who were verified Swifties and had received special codes for ticket purchases.

They also claimed that it would have been impossible for Swift to have been able to perform the number of shows required to meet the demand even if there were no issues with the ticket sales.

The announcement read in part, "Even when a high-demand onsale goes flawlessly from a tech perspective, many fans are left empty handed. For example: based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)… that's a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years."

Ticket Master's appeal has seemingly fallen on deaf ears as many fans have insisted that the agency colluded with scalpers to stiff them out of the possibility of buying a ticket so that they earn an extra fee every time the tickets are resold.

The lawsuit filed by a section of the fans asks the court to fine the company $2,500 per violation, in addition to reclaiming the costs incurred during the suit and any other form of relief as deemed by the court.

Despite the ticket fiasco, over 2.4 million slots were sold ahead of the upcoming tour. The tour will span six months, beginning in Arizona in March 2023 and rounding up in Los Angeles in August 2023.

Eras tour comes after Swift debuted her latest studio album, "Midnights" in October.