Lawmakers grill ticketing industry after Taylor Swift concert fiasco

A top Ticketmaster executive plans to blame "industrial scalpers" for recent online ticketing snafus and will call for legislation to rein in those bad actors, according to a copy of his prepared congressional testimony.

Joe Berchtold, the chief financial officer of Ticketmaster parent Live Nation, will tell lawmakers Tuesday that a surge of automated bots targeting the Taylor Swift ticket sale forced the company to "slow down" its operations.

"We knew bots would attack that onsale, and planned accordingly," according to Berchtold's prepared remarks. "We were then hit with three times the amount of bot traffic than we had ever experienced, and for the first time in 400 Verified Fan onsales they came after our Verified Fan access code servers. While the bots failed to penetrate our systems or acquire any tickets, the attack required us to slow down and even pause our sales. This is what led to a terrible consumer experience that we deeply regret."

Berchtold acknowledged that Ticketmaster could have mitigated the disaster by spacing out the release of tickets over a longer period of time, and by "doing a better job setting fan expectations."

"Let me be clear that Ticketmaster accepts its responsibility to be the first line of defense against bots in this ever-escalating arms race," he added, before pleading with lawmakers for "real reforms" to limit the impact of scalpers. That could include, he said, giving Ticketmaster and other private actors the legal right to sue scalpers for violations of the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, which bans the circumvention of ticketing providers' integrity programs.

Complaints about the Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation's monopoly power go back long, long before the Taylor Swift tour ticket problems last year.

In 1994, when Taylor Swift was only four years old and ticket purchase queues were in person or on the phone, not online, the rock group Pearl Jam filed a complaint with the Justice Department’s antitrust division asserting that Ticketmaster has a “virtually absolute monopoly on the distribution of tickets to concerts.” It tried to book its tour only at venues that didn’t use Ticketmaster.

The Justice Department and many state attorneys general have made similar complaints over the years.

Despite those concerns, Ticketmaster continued to grow more dominant. Pearl Jam’s complaint was quietly dismissed. The Justice Department and states allowed the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger to go through despite a 2010 court filing in the case raising objections to the merger. In the filing, the Justice Department said Ticketmaster’s share among major concert venues exceeded 80%.

CNN Business’ Chris Isidore contributed to this report.

Ticketmaster apologized to Taylor Swift and her fans in November after a ticketing debacle this week that made it difficult for consumers to buy tickets to the pop star’s new tour.

“We want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans — especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets,” the ticketing site said in the blog post.

The company added that it strives to make ticket buying “as easy as possible,” but that “hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets” to Swift’s tour, which kicks off March 17 and will have 52 concerts in multiple stadiums across the US over five months.

The company said that it is working to “shore up our tech for the new bar that has been set by demand” for her tour. “Once we get through that, if there are any next steps, updates will be shared accordingly,” it wrote.

Senate lawmakers will grill top executives from the event ticketing industry on Tuesday after Ticketmaster’s inability to process orders for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour left millions of fans unable to buy tickets or without their ticket even after purchase, and reignited public scrutiny on the industry.

Joe Berchtold, the president and CFO of Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation Entertainment, will testify along with Jack Groetzinger, CEO of ticketing platform SeatGeek. Others testifying include: Jerry Mickelson, CEO of Jam Productions, one of the largest producers of live entertainment, and singer-songwriter Clyde Lawrence, who has composed music for motion pictures, including the Disney+ holiday comedy movie “Noelle.”