You higher lawyer up, Ticketmaster: Taylor Swift followers file Eras Tour lawsuit

It’s no secret that there’s dangerous blood between Taylor Swift followers and Ticketmaster. Now the Swifties are formally taking authorized motion.

According to Rolling Stone, 26 Taylor Swift followers from 13 states filed a lawsuit towards the ticket vendor Friday in Los Angeles County. The criticism accuses Ticketmaster of violating the California Cartwright Act and the California Unfair Competition Law throughout final month’s “Verified Fan” pre-sale for Swift’s upcoming live performance. The plaintiffs are searching for a civil tremendous of $2,500 per violation.

Obtained by Rolling Stone, the lawsuit alleges that Ticketmaster’s father or mother firm (Live Nation Entertainment Inc.) engaged in fraud, price-fixing and antitrust-law violations whereas promoting advance tickets to the pop celebrity’s Eras Tour. The submitting additionally accuses Ticketmaster of “intentionally and purposefully mislead[ing] ticket purchasers by allowing scalpers and bots access to TaylorSwiftTix presale.”

In the wake of the pre-sale fiasco, many accused Ticketmaster of unfairly monopolizing the ticket market — which allegedly pressured “fans to buy more expensive tickets that Ticketmaster gets additional fees from every time the tickets are resold,” the lawsuit states.

Ticketmaster has blamed surprising and “unprecedented” demand for overwhelming its system and inflicting the Eras Tour to promote out prematurely. (The firm ended up canceling its sale to most people “due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.”)

But the fan lawsuit accused the corporate of “intentionally provid[ing] codes when it could not satisfy ticket demand” after “millions of fans waited up to eight hours and were unable to purchase tickets.”

Disgruntled Swifties should not the one ones with an ax to grind towards Ticketmaster. The Eras Tour debacle has additionally prompted the lawyer normal of Tennessee and even members of Congress to scrutinize the ticket business in latest weeks.

In a message to followers final month, Swift refused to “make excuses” for Ticketmaster after she and her staff “asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and … were assured they could.”

“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them,” the “Midnights” artist added.

“We strive to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour,” Ticketmaster stated final month in an announcement. “We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets.”

Ticketmaster didn’t instantly reply Sunday to The Times’ request for remark.