The main plaintiff in the lawsuit against Live Nation over the messy ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras’ tour has dropped the suit.
Back in December 2022, more than a dozen fans from 13 states submitted a lawsuit at Los Angeles County District Court, which alleged that Ticketmaster violated the California Cartwright Act and the California Unfair Competition Law during its “verified fan” pre-sale.
Fans were first able to access tickets for the North American tour on November 15. Many reported outlandish wait times in Ticketmaster’s online queue, outages to the company’s website, and hyper-inflated prices on resale sites (including Ticketmaster’s own) before the sale even began.
Ticketmaster later admitted it struggled with the “historically unprecedented demand” they faced from Swift’s fans, and scrapped the general sale entirely. Swift herself refused to “make excuses” for the company, saying she and her team had been assured that the site “could handle this kind of demand”.
Taylor Swift performs onstage during “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” at Allianz Parque on November 24, 2023 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Photo by Buda Mendes/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management )
Michelle Sterioff – a Swift fan – filed her case in December 2022, weeks after the botched Eras rollout. At the time, her lawyers blasted Live Nation as a “monopoly” that had “knowingly misled millions of fans.”
Per Billboard, Sterioff has agreed to drop her case against the concert giant, months after both sides agreed to put the case on hold, with a court filing from August saying the two sides had “agreed to continue their ongoing settlement discussions through mediation.”
It’s unclear if any kind of settlement has been reached in the suit. Per Rolling Stone, the August filing said discussions would be completed “no later than Jan. 31, 2024.”
Following the chaotic ‘Eras’ ticket sales, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti launched an investigation into Ticketmaster after numerous Swift fans reported issues with buying tickets.
Skrmetti said during a press conference on November 17, 2022 that he was concerned with the reported issues, but added that there were currently no allegations to make (via The Hill).
“We received a number of complaints and there’s been significant press coverage that the ticket sale process did not go smoothly,” the attorney general explained.
“It’s my job to ensure that the consumer protection laws and antitrust laws in Tennessee are being honoured.”
Taylor Swift performs onstage during “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” at Allianz Parque on November 24, 2023 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Photo by Buda Mendes/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management )
The fan lawsuits came just days after two US senators demanded answers from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding anti-bot laws, following the controversy surrounding Taylor Swift tickets.
They also highlighted bot-related problems surrounding ticket sales for Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Blake Shelton.
Swift herself responded to fans following the saga. “Well. It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans,” she began in a message via Instagram.
“We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It’s really difficult to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”
In other Swift news, the singer’s concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, will be available to watch at home from December.
In the US, Canada, UK and Ireland, the film will be available to rent digitally from December 13 (to coincide with Swift’s birthday). Other confirmed territories include Australia and New Zealand from December 14, and Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Mexico and Brazil from December 21.
As listed on Swift’s website, the film will be available from Apple TV+, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, Xfinity, YouTube and Sky.
Elsewhere, her ‘Eras’ tour has become the first tour to gross $1billion (£796million). first tour to gross $1billion (£796million).
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