Taylor Swift during an Eras Tour concert in Arlington, Texas. Photo Credit: Ronald Woan
Happy New Year, Live Nation: The promoter and its Ticketmaster subsidiary are facing an amended lawsuit from hundreds of Swifties who were allegedly shortchanged during the Eras Tour presale fiasco.
Right on cue, that fifth amended action arrived on 2025’s final day, a month and change after Judge George Wu dismissed a portion of the suit. But as we reported, the judge also allowed multiple arguments to proceed against Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which have for years been fending off the complaint.
In brief, Judge Wu tossed the negligence, fraud, and negligent misrepresentation claims introduced by the Swifties, who maintain that Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s alleged monopoly has fueled a variety of “demonstrated anticompetitive effects.”
(Chief among said effects: alleged consumer harm. Per the plaintiffs, Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s alleged conduct deprived them “of the opportunity they had been promised to participate meaningfully, or at all, in the Verified Fan Presale, the Capital One Presale or a public onsale, which led to most paying thousands of dollars for tickets with a face value of a fraction thereof.”)
And he left four central claims in place (concerning the alleged monopolization of the primary ticketing market, unlawful exclusive dealing, and California’s Unfair Competition Law), on top of dismissing a breach of contract claim with leave to amend.
Consequently, the suit’s latest version, besides shedding the dismissed claims, mainly updated the breach of contract argument.
According to the filing parties, they “entered into a binding contract with Ticketmaster based on” the platform’s terms of use.
That’s a decidedly important point given that some of the would-be buyers allegedly had their Eras Tour “tickets removed from their Ticketmaster accounts and sold by Ticketmaster to someone else, in breach of” the terms and the Verified Fan program’s own terms.
The alleged removal of presale participants’ already-purchased tickets is once again a big focus in the updated complaint, which also explores the alleged presale participation of individuals who lacked codes.
“Verified Fan plaintiffs with codes did not even get access to the Presale, while Ticketmaster admits that at least some Verified Fans without codes did,” the plaintiffs added. “This breaches Ticketmaster’s promise to give Verified Fans with codes priority access over others without them.”
“Nor did Ticketmaster give ‘preferred access’ or a ‘boost … in line’ to prior ‘Lover Fest’ Verified Fans or to purchasers of ‘Midnights’ merchandise, in breach of its promises to 37 plaintiffs herein. Such ‘boosted’ fans did not even get access to the Presale, while buyers without such boosts did gain such access and some obtained tickets,” they continued.
As for where the case goes from here, Live Nation and Ticketmaster now have until January 21st to submit a dismissal motion.
Late last month, the same defendants moved to shut down the Justice Department’s antitrust complaint – a comparatively significant action on multiple levels. Aside from threatening to split the companies, the government’s case is factoring prominently into the Swifties’ own suit.
“As a concrete example,” the Swift fanatics spelled out, “the Pending DoJ Case describes a threat Live Nation made against a venue that had decided to move its primary ticketing service from Ticketmaster to SeatGeek, which would have given the venue a greater share of secondary ticketing revenue.”
