Is Ticketmaster Going To Do Beyoncé Fans as Dirty as Taylor Swift Fans?
Here's hoping Ticketmaster won't break the soul of the Beyhive
Yesterday, Beyoncé basically broke the internet when she (finally) announced her dates for the Renaissance world tour. She also broke hearts when we all realized that she was using Ticketmaster. As a veteran of the Taylor Swift Eras tour disaster, let me tell you, no matter what you’re doing to prepare to get Beyoncé tickets, it’s not enough. Ticketmaster will find a way to destroy your hopes and dreams to see Ms. Carter, although there are some slightly promising signs that Beyoncé’s team learned from Swift’s.
How to get Beyoncé tickets through “verified fan” registration
First and foremost, if you’re interested, go register as a verified fan at Ticketmaster now. This is how I ended up getting my Taylor Swift tickets. If you get selected, this is not a guarantee you’ll actually get a ticket; it’s just the first hoop you have to jump through. What Beyoncé’s team has gotten right (and what Swift’s team got wrong) is that concert locations have been broken up into sub-groups. So, you pick what city and date you want to go see, which corresponds to a group letter, and then you register for that group verified fan presale. (For example, I want to see her in Chicago, which is in Group A. If you want to see her in Dallas, that’s Group B.)
Then, each group presumably has its pre-sale on a different day, allowing Ticketmaster to stagger what I’m sure is going to be record-breaking traffic on its site so that it hopefully doesn’t break the whole damn thing. I say presumably because, right now, no one is releasing any details on what comes next. This is Ticketmaster, after all. They have a monopoly. The first round of invites for the opportunity to purchase tickets comes out tomorrow to Beyhive members (to which of course I belong.) Ticketmaster is of course warning on the presale registration page that it expects demand to exceed supply. I mean, of course. This is Beyoncé we’re talking about:
Registration does not guarantee tickets – we expect there will be more demand than there are tickets available and a lottery-style process will determine which registered Verified Fans receive a unique access code and which are put on the waitlist.
Ticketmaster is in trouble
Ticketmaster got its head absolutely kicked in by Congress last week because of the Eras tour BS, and as someone who got lucky and spent an entire day just to get nosebleed seats to hear “Cruel Summer” live, they absolutely deserved it. The Judiciary Committee held a hearing and called Ticketmaster in, and as one Senator pointed out, somehow, this is essentially the only non-partisan issue in the country right now. Per Time:
But the parties appeared united in their suspicion of Ticketmaster, indicating renewed bipartisan interest in antitrust actions.
“I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement: You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, told Live Nation Entertainment President and Chief Financial Officer Joe Berchtold.
Personally, as someone who did everything right, and experienced all the issues outlined in the hearing—disappearing tickets from my cart, getting kicked out of the arena multiple times to be put back into the virtual queue, a 5-hour pause in the actual start time of the ticket sale with no warning while Ticketmaster tried to get its s*it together—I only got my Eras tickets because somehow, magically, they released an entire section bloc while I was refreshing, in the nosebleeds. I’m almost positive it’s behind the stage with an obstructed view, but I don’t care. I’m going, baby!
With that in mind, if I’m even lucky enough to get selected for the presale for Beyoncé (I’ve got three chances: Beyhive, Citi card holder, and Ticketmaster Verified Fan) I feel like I’m so jaded and beaten down by the Eras s*itshow, and my expectations are low enough that if I manage to come out of it with anything at all, I’ll be happy. Because if I know anything, it’s that Ticketmaster will try to break your soul. We should have listened to Pearl Jam in the ’90s when they tried to go in for the kill shot. Now Ticketmaster is too powerful.
There is some good news on the horizon, but it (probably) won’t help you try to score Renaissance tickets. The DOJ has launched an antitrust investigation into Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, as a result of the Eras tour. Per Time:
Federal authorities could take direct action by dismantling Live Nation Entertainment, but that hasn’t happened to a major company since the 1980s, when the federal government splintered AT&T.
It will suck if Renaissance goes the same as Eras. However, that might just be another nail in the coffin of Ticketmaster. If the Beyhive ends up being the death of Ticketmaster, truly, they will be the most powerful fandom of all time.
(featured image: Parkwood/Columbia)
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