Pa. Attorney General Josh Shapiro taking complaints over Taylor Swift Ticketmaster problems

Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement official thinks Ticketmaster might be in some “trouble, trouble, trouble” after a fiasco over canceled sales for pop star Taylor Swift’s latest concert tour.

On Thursday, Ticketmaster canceled the planned public sale of tickets for Swift’s Eras Tour that were set to drop Friday, and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is soliciting complaints about the incident. A pre-sale for “Verified Fans” started Tuesday, and millions of requests hit the website.

“Trouble, trouble, trouble,” tweeted Shapiro in reference to a Swift song. “Having trouble using Ticketmaster? Pennsylvanians experiencing problems using the site should submit a complaint to my office.”

???? Trouble, trouble, trouble ????

Having trouble using Ticketmaster? Pennsylvanians experiencing problems using the site should submit a complaint to my office: https://t.co/ZMqsSY0N2I

— AG Josh Shapiro (@PAAttorneyGen) November 17, 2022

As of Friday afternoon, Shapiro’s office had received more than 1,200 complaints about the ticket sales, said AG spokesperson Jacklin Rhoads. She would not, however, describe the nature of any possible investigation.

“I can’t confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” Rhoads said. “At this time, we are simply asking the public to reach out to our office if they have complaints.”

Shapiro recently won the election to become Pennsylvania’s next governor and will take office in January.

The U.S. Justice Department already has launched an antitrust investigation into the matter, The New York Times reported Friday. The investigation reportedly is looking into whether Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster, has abused its power over the live music industry.

Swift has called the experience “excruciating” in a post on Instagram, the Times reported.

“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” Swift said. “There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets, and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand, and we were assured they could.”

Swift, a Pennsylvania native, is set to play two shows in June at Acrisure Stadium. Those shows are part of the Eras Tour, which is Swift’s first tour since 2018. The tour is set to start March 17 and hit dozens of cities across the U.S.

“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets,” Swift said in an Instagram story, “but it really (ticks) me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”

Ticketmaster said the reason to cancel the public sale was because of “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.”

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It’s unclear how many tickets remain and how many would be sold. Ticketmaster said about 1.5 million fans who had gone through an early “Verified Fan” verification process were invited to purchase tickets, and the remaining 2 million were placed on a waiting list.

The Ticketmaster website has been experiencing slowdowns because of high traffic, leaving many fans frustrated and unable to purchase tickets.

Ticketmaster said a large number of bot accounts had attempted to purchase tickets, which overwhelmed traffic on its website.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.