For many college students, concerts are milestones. Seeing Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour or Ariana Grande’s 2026 comeback tour can feel like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But Ticketmaster’s glitches, hidden fees and resale practices have recently turned that excitement into frustration.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, Ticketmaster is the dominant ticketing platform in the United States, handling sales for about 80% of major concert venues. For most big shows, it’s the only way to sell tickets to the public.
In September, the FTC and seven state attorneys general — including Illinois — sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster for “coordinating with brokers” and allowing them to buy tickets in bulk to resell at a significantly higher price.
These problems aren’t new to regular concertgoers. In 2023, Swift’s Eras Tour became infamous for hour-long waiting room queues and error messages that left millions of die-hard fans without tickets. Even when sales went through, many tickets came out immediately on resale sites at double or even triple the price.
Ivan Martinez, junior in LAS and Social Work, knows this struggle very well. He tried getting tickets for Beyoncé and a few K-pop groups, but ultimately knows that it’s difficult to snag tickets for well-known artists.
Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!
“Resale bots get them and the prices are ridiculous, honestly,” Martinez said.
Resale bots are automated programs that buy large numbers of tickets from Ticketmaster once the sales open. Despite the 2016 Better Online Ticket Sales Act banning the practice, bots have continued to find ways around enforcement.
Fans like Martinez are often left to refresh the website, sometimes every hour, just hoping for a price drop.
Daniel Almeida, sophomore in Engineering, has seen other challenges. Over the summer, he tried to get Tate McRae tickets for her tour at the United Center. The concert held around 23,000 people, but the number of people waiting for their chance to purchase tickets was unimaginable.
“You’ll literally press the link immediately, and you’ll be like 100,000th in line,” Almeida said.
When tickets suddenly appeared, the cheapest upper-level seats were listed for hundreds of dollars. Luckily, Almeida found a way to score a good deal last minute.
“Instead of using Ticketmaster that time — because it was so overpriced and the queue was so hard to wait — I went in person to the box office,” Almeida said. “I bought tickets there for $70 and I was third row (of the 100s section). It was amazing.”
While some may describe Ticketmaster as exhausting, others have managed to find alternatives.
Owen Anderson, sophomore in LAS, said he enjoys going to smaller concerts around Champaign-Urbana, where ticketing feels less stressful and more dependent on the fan rather than the seller.
At the same time, he has seen how popularity can shift the experience of buying tickets. When he wanted to see FKA twigs, the concert was in such high demand that the show moved to a larger venue, giving fans a better chance of being there.
“My advice with Ticketmaster is just to not panic,” Anderson said. “There is so much time in between getting your tickets at the presale and then to the actual concert.”
For him, the key is staying calm and making thoughtful choices, even when you feel like you’re in the heat of a chaotic ticketing system.
“Just be conscious,” Anderson said. “Don’t panic, just get the tickets when they feel right. There’s no rush, you can always get them at any time.”
