The chairperson of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, said on Tuesday that large companies such as Ticketmaster that are facing an outpouring of criticism due to issues with selling tickets to 2023’s Taylor Swift tour, can turn out to be “too big to care.”
In a speech at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit, Khan claimed that It was actually that the Justice Department that approved the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation in 2010 and mentioned a report that indicated the department was conducting a probe underway.
“There can be concerns that when firms become (large) they can become too big to care,” she said, adding that giant companies may not have the motivation to invest in research and development since they don’t face the challenge of a tough market.
“There’s been public reporting that the Justice Department continues to look at this and I’m sure it’s top of mind for them, given all the incoming that they’re getting,” she said.
Ticketmaster has been subject to fresh criticism in the eyes of U.S. lawmakers over how it handled the sale of tickets for the first Swift tour in five years.
On Tuesday the 12th of November, a bipartisan group legislators from the House Energy and Commerce Committee addressed Michael Rapino, chief executive of Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation, to raise concerns over the chaos that has occurred during this Taylor Swift ticket sale and to request a meeting with personnel on charges and price changes, ticket availability and scalping, as well as transferability.
There will also be a congress hearing, which is likely to take place this month, regarding the incident in November that went down in the gutter when Ticketmaster offered tickets in the Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. Some fans had a difficult time using the website that sold tickets.
The month before, U.S. lawmakers pressed the FTC to apply a law from 2016 against bots used by ticket scalpers after Ticketmaster claimed that the software was responsible for issues selling tickets for Swift’s concert.
