Attorneys general in three states are investigating the Taylor Swift ticket fiasco

Taylor Swift Fans were understandably outraged after she ended up leaving millions of fans empty-handed after a long and grueling process of pre-booking tickets for her upcoming Eras Tour. Because of the way it was handled by Ticketmaster and then abruptly canceled, the controversy has caught the attention of attorneys general in Nevada, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

The Associated Press reports that sales have skyrocketed to 2 million tickets in one day, breaking a Ticketmaster record for every single artist on the platform. Of course, bots were handling the sales, and that’s what caused all the problems. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro was quick and taciturn when referring to Swift himself and providing Swifte’s instructions on how to file a complaint directly with his office.

The abundance of complaints [email protected] will be too many for an intern or paralegal, but they will be very useful in his investigations. Shapiro will not be alone. Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee will also launch an investigation into the matter. In 2008, Tennessee passed an “anti-bot” law that would have prevented all of this. Surely that will be part of the investigation after Skrmetti collects all the complaints he needs.

While Tennessee and Pennsylvania are filing complaints, Nevada has already filed theirs. The Attorney General’s Office is currently investigating Ticketmaster for “alleged deceptive or unfair trading practices.”

For her part, Taylor Swift was very upset about the whole ordeal. In a since-removed Instagram post, the megastar was quoted as saying: “There are a variety of reasons people have had such a hard time getting tickets and I’m trying to figure out how to improve this situation as we move forward. I will not apologize to anyone because we asked them several times if they could handle this type of demand and we were assured that they could. It’s really amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that many of them feel like they went through multiple bear attacks to get them.”

It has long been speculated that a dominant ticket seller like Ticketmaster will cause problems for fans and the musicians themselves. When asked about the fiasco, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to answer what Biden’s administration plans to do, but quoted the president as saying, “Lack of competition leads to higher prices and worse service.”