Scoring tickets to Taylor Swift’s blockbuster tour was expensive for thousands of fans. It didn’t have to be
Taylor Swift fans queue outside Rogers Centre to shop for merchandise ahead of the opening night of Swift's Eras tour in Toronto, on Nov. 13.
In Ontario, Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government floated a proposal that would have capped resale prices at a 50 per cent markup of the original price, an idea the Progressive Conservatives dismissed as “unenforceable.” This ignores the fact that plenty of European countries have found a way to do exactly that, either throughon its site for many live events, could feasibly rein in runaway prices by enforcing caps of its own.
While it’s true that scores of lucky fans managed to land seats to the Eras show at a reasonable cost, many others were left fighting for the scraps on the “resale market,” a genteel term for predatory scalping. To wit: any poor soul who wants to see the pop star in person this weekend is looking at spending a minimum of $3,400 for a single ticket on StubHub.
But so what, you say? If diehard fans are willing to plunk down unholy amounts of money for a ticket, so be it – it’s supply and demand, the free market in action. But this is a market nearly void of competition. Ticketmaster’s stranglehold on live music acts – cemented by its 2010 merger with Live Nation, which controls venues – means that stadium-filling artists like Ms. Swift have no choice but to team up with Ticketmaster if they have any hope of meeting demand.
It’s time to do right by the Swifties, and all the other fans who want to see their favourite artists without being thrown to the predatory wolves of the ticketing industry. Art, even the glitter-dusted pop music variety, is worth protecting. Imagine the furor if a day at the ROM costed $300.
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