A Taylor Swift fan who launched a class action lawsuit against entertainment giant Live Nation for “knowingly misleading millions of fans” during the infamous presale debacle has now dropped her claims against the company.
Swiftie Michelle Sterioff first filed the case in December 2022 following Swift’s ticket sale for The Eras Tour via Ticketmaster. During the sale, fans faced service delays, website crashes, and hours-long queues, leaving millions of Swifties empty-handed.
Sterioff’s lawyers called Live Nation and Ticketmaster a “monopoly,” accusing the companies of violating consumer protection and anti-trust laws. The entire fiasco even sparked an investigation into the 2010 Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger by the Department of Justice. However, now a year later, Sterioff voluntarily asked a federal judge to dismiss her case this week. It is unknown if Sterioff and Live Nation reached a settlement or not, though in August, it was reported that both parties were engaged in “ongoing settlement discussions.”
The case was also halted over the past few months after both sides decided to wait for a federal appeals court to rule on a separate antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation to determine if the company can force buyers to resolve legal claims in private arbitration — which U.S. District Judge George Wu said poses “a serious risk of being fundamentally unfair to claimants.”
While Sterioff’s case is closed, another class action is still alive and well; Kinder Law, the woman-owned personal injury law firm in Texas, is currently representing 355 Swifties in an ongoing federal case in California against Ticketmaster, filed by the lead plaintiff Julie Barfuss. She filed the suit around the same time as Sterioff, claiming Ticketmaster violated breach of contract, fraud, negligence, negligent misrepresentation, and anti-trust violations.
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A year after what is described as “The Great War,” Kinder Law told Swifties to keep fighting, calling for fans to “unite and raise their voice against monopolistic capitalism in the sports and entertainment industries.” The law firm is still accepting complaints on their website where fans can submit claims including expensive prices due to dynamic pricing, invalid codes during the presale, or if they were uninformed about an obstructed view or disability seat.
The firm is about to file another case representing 160 plaintiffs against Ticketmaster. In a statement to TicketNews, Jennifer Kinder of Kinder Law said that she fully believes these cases “absolutely will impact the ticketing industry,” noting that “Ticketmaster pissed off the wrong fan base.”
“We are currently waiting on a 9th circuit ruling on a favorable decision in the Swiftie lawsuit,” Kinder said. “This decision will keep us in a court, in front of a judge and jury. We will never be silenced and we will not stop until live entertainment is changed in favor of consumers.”
The Eras Tour has broken records — becoming the first tour to gross over $1 billion — cementing Swift as a musical, cultural, and economical phenomenon. While the “Cruel Summer” singer has proven she’s one to be reckoned with in the music industry, her tour also opened doors to questions within the ticketing industry. This year alone, fans of artists across all genres have been feeling the burn of Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s control of the industry with sky-high “platinum” and “dynamic” prices for acts like Olivia Rodrigo, Morgan Wallen, Bad Bunny, and Noah Kahan.
Even in the sports world, amid the arrival of global superstar Lionel Messi at Inter Miami CF, fans have felt the surge in ticket prices, all while Live Nation reported a revenue boost during its third quarter earnings, bringing-in $16.9 billion year-to-date. However, aside from their market power, not everyone is keen on the pair sticking together. A new poll, conducted by Global Strategy Group Guidant Polling & Strategy and commissioned by secondary ticketing site SeatGeek, found that a majority of Americans support the DOJ seeking to break-up the pair.
Legislators have also openly spoken-out regarding the merger — which allows the pair to act as venue owners, operators, ticket sellers, and promoters simultaneously. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said the merger “has decimated competition in the ticketing industry and resulted in higher fees for consumers.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) echoed similar sentiments.
“The Department of Justice reportedly has an investigation underway about the potential violations of the consent decree… assuming that it finds there has been, yet again, I think it’s the third time, a violation of that consent decree, isn’t it time to break up that merger, to roll it back, to admit it ain’t working out for consumers?”