It's been less than a month since the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster controversy first began, but there's already a new TV special documenting the issues — and it also features some input from Taylor Swift herself. In case you somehow missed the fuss, fans trying to get tickets to Swift's Eras tour will be met with long lines, crashes, and glitches (not Swift) when presales begin on November 15 the situation sung about in "Midnight") .
Fans who managed to snag tickets were in luck, because two days later, Ticketmaster canceled the public sale of tickets entirely, citing "extreme demands on the ticketing system and a lack of remaining ticket inventory." The record-breaking "Midnight Rain" musician herself responded to the debacle on her Instagram Stories, writing that it was "painful" to see it all go down. "It's really amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it pisses me off that a lot of them felt like they went through a couple of bear attacks to get the tickets," Swift continued.
If you want to know more about these symbolic bear attacks, a new Taylor Swift Ticketmaster documentary is streaming on Hulu. Following its debut on Dec. 1 as part of ABC's IMPACT x Nightline series, the special also features interviews with several Swifties, including Steven Sullivan and Nicole Hallberg, who have both shared their ticket struggles on social media .
One of the issues discussed in the documentary is the perceived failure of Ticketmaster's verified fan system, which the company said was "designed to help manage high-demand shows - identifying real people and weeding out bots." Ticketmaster claimed in a blog post , the unprecedented traffic “undermines the hallmark predictability and reliability of our verified fan platform.”
The special also explores legal concerns about Ticketmaster's practices, which Senator Amy Klobuchar recently described in a letter as a "crazy monopoly story," adding that there will be two meetings Party holds Senate hearing to 'drive solutions'.
One legal development not mentioned in the Taylor Swift documentary special is a new lawsuit against Ticketmaster, but that's just because Swifties work so fast. According to the New York Times , on December 2, one day after the IMPACT x Nightline special, 26 of them filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster's parent company, accusing it of "anticompetitive conduct and fraud."
Clearly, another documentary is needed to tell how the new legal challenges were resolved. But until then, the Hulu special should provide some explanation to fans who got nothing after Eras pre-orders.
