Ticket Resale Platforms Being Tested by Taylor Swift Tour

The ticket reselling business is being tested in new ways by the current Taylor Swift tour.

While the pop star has tried to see that tickets go to fans rather than resellers, many of those fans have now tried scalping tickets for the first time, and it’s causing problems for resale platforms, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Wednesday (May 24).

Beyond that, professional ticket brokers are having trouble fulfilling their orders due to high prices and low inventory, according to the report.

Resale platforms — and would-be ticket buyers — are running into a variety of problems, the report said.

For example, some fan sellers are listing their tickets on multiple sites and not taking down those listings when the tickets have been sold elsewhere.

Others are failing to confirm to the platform that they have transferred the tickets to the buyer, leading platforms to tell the buyer that the transaction has been canceled.

To deal with these problems, some platforms have tightened the deadlines for sellers to deliver tickets, proactively reached out to offer help to sellers who have been slow to send tickets and charged penalties to sellers who fail to deliver.

Platforms have also helped buyers find other tickets when an order falls through and compensated buyers for the difference in price when the replacement tickets are more expensive.

One company chose to opt out of enabling the resale of tickets for this tour on its platform, according to the report.

Swift clashed with Ticketmaster late last year after the company’s website crashes kept fans from buying tickets.

That feud prompted more scrutiny of the event ticketing sector, including a January hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee called “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment.”

The entire events industry is under pressure to up the quality of its technological game to meet the rising tide of demand, SeatGeek Director of Payment and Risk Operations Shawn Kelley told PYMNTS in an interview posted in March 2021.

“Ticketing is interesting because it isn’t a typical eCommerce flow where you can say, ‘Oh, sorry, we’re having a problem. Try your purchase again in a few minutes and you can hold something in a basket,’” Kelley said at the time.