Taylor's Version: Could Live Nation's skyrocketed revenue be the result of the Ticketmaster controversy?

Photo by Chaz McGregor on Unsplash  

November 1st, 2022. The much-anticipated Eras Tour was announced on icon Taylor Swift’s Instagram. Swift’s fans, Swifties, from all over the world were ready for presale, knowing they were competing against around 85 million monthly listeners looking for that golden ticket. This exponential increase in demand was something that Live Nation’s Ticketmaster was not ready for. In fact, the demand was so immense that even when Swift added shows to the tour, the amount of concert goers persisted (Maruf). News opinion columnists reported Ticketmaster for their mishandling of the system with artist Taylor Swift criticizing the company publicly as the Department of Justice leads an investigation into Ticketmaster’s wrongdoings. 

Interestingly, an article by CNN finds that despite this criticism, their sales have increased exponentially. Some of the credit goes to other tours from singers like Beyonce, Drake, and Bruce Springsteen all of whom sold their tickets through Ticketmaster. However, most of the credit actually goes to the sales that were sold for the Eras Tour before the site’s meltdown in November 2022. Over 2 million tickets were sold on November 15th, making Taylor Swift break the record for the most amount of tickets sold on Ticketmaster. This strong demand was seen across the 47 tours in the United States and in select cities internationally that were sold on Ticketmaster, which benefited the company’s revenue. 

Regarding the revenue from the Eras Tour alone, Billboard led an analysis of the hypothetical income of money based on the sales of Ticketmaster. The analysis revealed that if Ticketmaster received just 10-15% of the sales, they would receive 1.6 million in revenue per show with an additional $3.8 to $5 million brought in revenue. As a result of this sales boost, there was an increase in the usage of the application and digital platforms provided by Live Nation.

Overall, the Eras Tour although potentially created a negative outlook of Ticketmaster, the attention and demand has driven the company to success.