Taylor Swift Fans Sue Ticketmaster After ‘Eras Tour’ Sales Debacle

The lawsuit was among the first filed by Ms. Swift’s fans since the sale for the “Eras Tour” drew national attention in November. The website for Ticketmaster, one of the few places to get tickets for Ms. Swift’s U.S. tour, crashed repeatedly during the presale as millions of fans swarmed the site. They waited for hours in virtual queues and in the end many were never able to purchase tickets.

“Ticketmaster intentionally and purposefully misled ticket purchasers,” the lawsuit said.
Fans, and some politicians, directed their anger at Ticketmaster over what they said was its monopolistic practices and faulty technology in the wake of the problems. The company, which merged with Live Nation in 2010, is the dominant ticket seller in the U.S.

Ticketmaster said at the time the glitches were because of high demand, not its technology.
Ticketmaster and

Live Nation Entertainment Inc.

didn’t return requests for comment Monday. Representatives for Ms. Swift and the fans who filed the lawsuit didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ticketmaster said more than 3.5 million people registered for the presale, a record number, and that it gave codes to around 1.5 million people. The company canceled its general sale to the public because it said it didn’t have enough tickets left. More than 2.4 million tickets were sold for Ms. Swift’s U.S. tour.

In the fans’ lawsuit filed this past week, they said Ticketmaster had defrauded them in part by increasing ticket prices and by encouraging them to buy Ms. Swift’s merchandise in exchange for potentially getting a presale access code. Some of them did, and still didn’t get a code, they said.

The fans said they want thousands of dollars in damages but didn’t specify an exact amount. They also asked the Los Angeles County Superior Court to hold a trial that would make an example of Ticketmaster.

“Ticketmaster’s service is not superior or reliable,” the lawsuit said. “The massive disaster of the Taylor Swift presale is evidence of this.”

Ms. Swift said in the aftermath that it was “excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.” She didn’t name Ticketmaster directly but said the ticket sellers had assured her they could handle her fans’ demand.

After the presale, Ticketmaster apologized to Ms. Swift and her fans. It detailed how its system failed and said it was working to improve the experience.

The episode sparked broad scrutiny. The Justice Department is investigating Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s owner, over potential antitrust law violations, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The Senate antitrust subcommittee is set to hold a hearing at a later date over an alleged lack of competition in the ticketing industry.

Live Nation said in a statement this past month that it takes antitrust laws seriously and it didn’t engage in behavior that warranted litigation.

The fans said in their lawsuit that Ticketmaster had violated California antitrust laws by forcing Ms. Swift and other musicians to use its services. That in turn allowed the company to control access to Ms. Swift’s tickets and to monopolize the ticket market, the fans said.

The fans are from more than a dozen states including California, Georgia and Pennsylvania, according to the lawsuit. They said they filed the lawsuit in California because the state’s antitrust laws were made to prevent a single company from raising prices because it didn’t have competition. Ticketmaster is based in California.

“Ticketmaster has created the flimsiest of excuses,” the lawsuit said, “to justify anticompetitively taking additional money for itself.”

Write to Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com