A Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Joe Berchtold, president and CFO of Live Nation, who said “We apologize to the fans, we apologize to Ms. Swift, we need to do better and we will do better.” “In hindsight there are several things we could have done better – including staggering the sales over a longer period of time and doing a better job setting fan expectations for getting tickets.”

At issue, of course, was the Taylor Swift Eras Tour that caused a meltdown on Ticketmaster. Senators tossed out Taylor lyrics as they slammed Berchtold for Live Nation’s fee structure and failed system for dealing with bots. (Bots buy tickets in bulk and resell them at jacked up prices.)  Jack Groetzinger, co-founder of SeatGeek joined the convo saying process of buying tickets is “antiquated and ripe for innovation”. He suggested Live Nation and Ticketmaster (which merged in 2010) should be separated again to allow more competition, because together they control 70% of all ticket sales.

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