Taylor Swift Fans Planning to Sue Ticketmaster After Eras Tour Ticketing Controversy: Report

Swifties are not afraid to take legal action.

More than two dozen Taylor Swift fans are planning to sue Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company for Ticketmaster, after the the way ticket sales for her upcoming Eras Tour went down last month.

According to documents obtained by Deadline, Live Nation Entertainment is being accused of violating the state’s Cartwright Act and Unfair Competition Law, fraud, misrepresentation and fraudulent inducement.

The plaintiffs are seeking a penalty of $2,500 against Ticketmaster for every violation of Business and Professions Code section 17200.

The documents, which are seemingly set to be filed in Los Angeles, were published on Friday and cite the “disaster” that occurred on Nov. 15 and Nov. 16, along with the “cancellation of general sale tickets scheduled for Nov. 18.”

“Based on information and belief, Ticketmaster has effectuated this anticompetitive scheme by forcing fans of musicians to exclusively use Ticketmaster for presale and sales prices, which are above what a competitive market price would be,” the suit alleges. “Ticketmaster has also forced attendees to exclusively use Ticketmaster’s ‘Secondary Ticket Exchange’—i.e., the platform Ticketmaster operates for the resale of concert tickets.”

The plaintiffs also allege that Ticketmaster “intentionally and purposefully mislead ticket purchasers” by permitting “scalpers and bots” to access the presale. It also claims that the site provided more codes than ticket allotment and scheduled the general ticket sale “knowing they would not have the quantity necessary” to fulfill the demand.

The suit goes on to allege that the secondary ticket market forced “fans to buy more expensive tickets,” which Ticketmaster profited from as it received “additional fees from every time the tickets” were resold.

Live Nation Entertainment did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

On Nov. 19, after the ticketing service canceled the general sale for the tour, Ticketmaster issued an apology.

“We strive to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour,” Ticketmaster prefaced in the statement. “First, we want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans — especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets.”

“Next, we feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened,” the statement continued.

Ticketmaster explained their Verified Fan registration process, which is intended to help manage high-demand sales and weed out bots. The company noted that more than 3.5 million people pre-registered for the TaylorSwiftTix Presale powered by Verified Fan, which was its largest registration in history. The Tuesday sale also broke Ticketmaster’s record for most tickets sold for an artist in a single day, selling two million tickets.

Ticketmaster said that around 15% of users experienced issues, some of whom lost tickets they had carted. They blamed the “unprecedented traffic” on a “staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have codes,” with 3.5 billion total system requests, four times higher than its previous peak.

Swift has since called out Ticketmaster, although she didn’t directly name the company in a statement that said that the chaotic presale “really pisses me off.”

“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could,” Swift wrote on her Instagram Story. “It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”