An Eras Tour performance. Photo Credit: Stephen Mease
Three years ago, ticked-off Swifties sued Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary over the Eras Tour “ticket sale debacle.” Now, multiple amended complaints and twists later, the suit is officially proceeding.
Judge George Wu just recently allowed the case to continue by denying components of Live Nation’s dismissal push – albeit while tossing a portion of the multifaceted complaint.
Turning back the clock for a moment, the initial action arrived in December 2022, and the hundreds of involved plaintiffs submitted their fourth amended suit this past July.
Spanning nearly 75 pages, the all-encompassing document described the frustrations of fans who, upon purportedly attempting to buy Eras Tour presale tickets, were allegedly “thwarted from completing purchases” due to various website errors.
As for the corresponding claims, the amended suit didn’t solely recount far-from-ideal ticketing experiences for a high-demand tour. Rather, the plaintiffs, citing the Justice Department’s ongoing antitrust suit multiple times, framed these experiences as a consequence of Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s alleged anticompetitive practices.
“The size of the Live Nation and Ticketmaster empire, and the power it exerts, hurts the live music industry, harms competition and fans significantly,” they wrote in the suit’s fourth iteration.
“Competition on the merits would enable more invention and better offerings. For example, other ticketing services could become more fan-friendly by creating more streamlined user interfaces and purchase flows, transparency in ticket inventory, enhanced buying options and flexible refund policies,” the plaintiffs continued.
Technically, the case’s partial dismissal, though just finalized, isn’t quite new; the court had handed down a tentative dismissal ruling earlier in November before confirming the determination after an oral argument.
In short, Judge Wu tossed three of the Swifties’ claims (alleging negligence, fraud, and negligent misrepresentation) without leave to amend, pointing in part to the plaintiffs’ failure “to sufficiently allege that” Live Nation/Ticketmaster had “made promises with no intent to perform.”
The judge also dismissed a single breach of contract claim; per the amended action, the plaintiffs had “purchased Eras Tour tickets in the Verified Fan Presale” before seeing “these tickets removed from their Ticketmaster accounts and sold by Ticketmaster to someone else, in breach of Ticketmaster’s” terms.
Here, however, the plaintiffs will have the opportunity to amend their argument. The court drove home that it “will not accept general references to supporting exhibits; Plaintiffs must identify the language from any exhibit cited that supports the existence of any alleged express term of the contract.”
Still standing are four central claims, alleging primary-ticketing monopolization, unlawful exclusive dealing (in violation of both the Sherman Antitrust Act and California law), and a separate violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law.
With that, it’ll be worth tracking the marathon legal battle – and Live Nation’s other courtroom confrontations, among them the aforementioned DOJ case and a years-old proposed class action – into 2026.
