Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is questioning Ticketmaster after a Taylor Swift presale event crashed, leaving many fans angry and without tickets.
The Democrat, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, sent a letter to Ticketmaster on Wednesday expressing "serious concerns" about the lack of competition in the ticketing industry.
"Ticketmaster's power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services. That can result in dramatic service failures, where consumers are the ones that pay the price," Klobuchar wrote.
Two million tickets were sold during the Swift presale event, the platform's highest single-day total, the company said. Fans encountered long queues and errors as they tried to reach the online ticket checkout. Ticketmaster said its site was overwhelmed by real users and bots.
The site crash prompted Ticketmaster to cancel the general public sale it had planned for Friday because it did not have enough tickets left. The company cited "extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory."
In an interview with WCCO-TV, Klobuchar said she will call a congressional hearing on the matter and demanded a Department of Justice investigation. On Friday, national media reported that the DOJ has opened an investigation.
"There just has to be consequences for this type of behavior," Klobuchar told WCCO.
Ticketmaster said in its statement, "we know we can do more to improve the experience and that's what we're focused on."
