Utah Swifties are one step closer to settling bad blood with the country’s largest ticket sales company.
The state of Utah will join the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, accusing the companies of driving up ticket prices for fans by maintaining a monopoly over the concert and live entertainment industry.
The Beehive State is one of 10 states that recently joined in on the lawsuit, originally filed in Manhattan in May. So far, 39 states and the District of Columbia make up the plaintiff count in that lawsuit.
The decision by the state to join the DOJ lawsuit bodes well for people like Julie Barfuss, from West Jordan. Barfuss is the lead plaintiff in a separate lawsuit involving more than 350 plaintiffs, from Dallas-based law firm Kinder Law PLLC.
Barfuss is one of five Utahns represented in that lawsuit, which is part of a larger grassroots movement called “Take Down Ticketmaster.”
In a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune, a Live Nation Entertainment spokesperson said: “There is nothing new in the amended [Department of Justice] complaint — the lawsuit still won’t solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows. We look forward to sharing more facts as the case progresses.”
The spokesperson also referred people to a fact list on the company’s website. When it comes to the Swift onsale, Live Nation states on the website, “The issues during this onsale were caused by a novel cyber-attack. While the bots failed to penetrate our systems or acquire any tickets, the attack required us to slow down and even pause our sales. Our engineers working behind the scenes built new defenses in real-time, and sales were ultimately able to progress later in the day.”
Barfuss was a part of the original Ticketmaster meltdown in 2022, when tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour went on sale.
“I had a bad experience that day, and I had posted a video on TikTok,” Barfuss said. “I spent, like everyone, all day online trying to get the tickets, and at the end of the day, had no tickets because I kept getting errors and booted out.”
She chronicled her tumultuous presale experience and what followed. “When I tried to do the Capital One presale, my card got declined,” Barfuss said. The message that popped up said that she had no balance on the card, and after calling the credit card company, Barfuss learned she had 41 transactions from SeatGeek, totaling $14,000.
The money got put into her account, eventually, but the charges kept her from getting tickets, even with a coveted presale code.
Jennifer Kinder, the attorney on the lawsuit, reached out to Barfuss after seeing her videos, Barfuss said, and asked her to be a part of the lawsuit. She also asked Barfuss to be the lead plaintiff.
Kinder did not respond to a request to comment for this story.
Similar groups have formed in the two years since the Eras tour debacle. Another Utah woman and paralegal joined a group of Swifties to advocate for repercussions for Ticketmaster.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee also got involved in the debate, as the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights. The subcommittee announced in January 2023 after the Swift ticket fiasco that it will investigate Ticketmaster.
“I do feel pretty strongly about advocating for change with live ticketing and all of those issues that exist with it,” Barfuss said. She, along with Kinder, went to Washington, D.C., in January to advocate for the DOJ lawsuit.
“My big overarching hope is just to see change in the industry, because I do think that the way it’s set up right now, here in the U.S., it’s almost impossible to get through the first sale. You’re almost always having to get them from a reseller,” Barfuss said. “Live entertainment impacts everyone. It’s not really just about Taylor Swift or even about concerts. It impacts Broadway, plays, sports, all of those things.”
Barfuss — who ended up seeing Swift perform in July 2023 in Santa Clara, Calif. — also said their lawsuit is different from others because it’s not a class action, but represents 355 individual plaintiffs.
Ann Clark is another plaintiff, from Salt Lake City. She said she and her children are big concertgoers. In February, they attended the kickoff of Bad Bunny’s “Most Wanted Tour” at the Delta Center.
“We go to [an] average about 25 shows a year, I’ve gone to thousands in my life,” Clark said. “In general, it’s getting harder and harder to go because [Ticketmaster has] monopolized the market.”
Clark said she did try to get tickets for Swift’s Las Vegas shows, but wasn’t able to. “I only know a handful of people that actually were able to be successful in that,” she said.
She said she decided to join in on the lawsuit because “I’ve never seen anybody take on Ticketmaster. … You can’t really get tickets anywhere else. I would like to see them just make it easier for people and maybe to have more choice, too. I don’t know that [Ticketmaster] should be the only one.”