Editor’s note: After the posting of this story, a Ticketmaster representative responded to Billboard, denying NPR’s reporting that the ticketing company’s system had gone down for a period during U.K. pre-sales for Beyonce’s Renaissance tour. The rep noted that telecommunications provider O2’s app had experienced technical difficulties during the pre-sale. An O2 representative confirms this, telling Billboard, “Given the huge demand, some customers experienced issues accessing our platform. This was an issue with our platform caused by the unprecedented demand, and not an issue with Ticketmaster’s website.”
As the first tickets for Beyoncé‘s eagerly anticipated Renaissance world tour begin to roll out, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a strong warning to Ticketmaster: “we’re watching.” The tweet from the Democrat members of the committee issued on Thursday afternoon (Feb. 2) included a clip from a CNN report about the Beyhive keeping a close eye on the ticketing giant in the wake of the disastrous roll-out of tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
The tweet came just hours before NPR reported that the initial roll-out of Renaissance tour tickets in the UK on Thursday morning had already led to fear from superfans that they may not get to see the show. With pre-sales beginning in England, NPR spoke to several fans who said that a combination of high prices — up to a reported $2,400 for some seats — and a reported snag in the ticketing system that knocked it offline 15 minutes before sales started has already led to some frustration in the Beyhive. (Billboard has since confirmed that the technical issue was with the O2 Priority platform, not Ticketmaster’s system.)
“Pre-sale tickets for the Beyonce tour went on sale on our O2 Priority platform at 10 a.m. on Thursday morning. Given the huge demand, some customers experienced issues accessing our platform. This was an issue with our platform caused by the unprecedented demand, and not an issue with Ticketmaster’s website,” a representative for telecommunications company O2 told Billboard on Saturday (Feb. 4).
Ticketmaster’s president/CFO Joe Berchtold appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week to defend the company over the high-profile Swift ticketing mess, with witnesses calling for drastic action to break up what they claim is a monopoly. Ticketmaster issued a formal apology to Swift and her fans after the chaotic ticket sale process for the 2023 Eras tour, in which the system crashed shortly after launch as 14 million fans and billions of bots flooded the site during the presale, causing service disruptions.
Tickets for the U.S. Beyoncé dates are slated to go on sale on Monday (Feb. 6) after Bey recently added more dates at seven North American stadiums due to high demand. Second shows have been tacked on in Toronto on July 9, Chicago on July 23, East Rutherford on July 30, Washington, DC on August 6, Atlanta on August 12, Los Angeles on September 3 and Houston on September 24.
According to a press release from Live Nation, fan demand for Renaissance seats has already exceeded the number of available tickets by more than 800% based on current registration numbers. However, even with these added dates, “it is still expected that the majority of interested fans will not be able to get tickets because demand drastically exceeds supply.”
See the Judiciary Committee’s tweet below.