Live Nation CEO, largest shareholder defend company after Taylor Swift ticket chaos

The CEOs of Live Nation and Liberty Media, the largest shareholder of the entertainment company, defended Ticketmaster and its merger with Live Nation on Thursday after receiving criticism stemming from sales complications for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour.

Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that demand for tour tickets “exceeded every expectation,” causing technical difficulties on the Ticketmaster site.

“It’s a function of Taylor Swift. The site was supposed to open up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans. We had 14 million people hit the site, including bots, which are not supposed to be there,” said Maffei.

Live Nation chief Michael Rapino corroborated Maffei’s claims, saying: “There’s no nice way to tell 10 million Swifties, ‘There’s no tickets.’”

“We invited a million and a half on that day to come and buy those tickets, but it’s kind of like having a party. Everybody crashed that door at the same time with 3.5 billion requests,” said Rapino at Liberty Media’s investor day, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Ticketmaster sold 2 million Taylor Swift tickets, “the most we’ve ever sold in one day in history,” and an additional 1 million tickets for other artists on the same day, Rapino said.

Maffei added on CNBC that ticket demand for Taylor Swift’s tour “could have filled 900 stadiums.”

The Liberty Media chief also hit back at a tweet Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) posted, claiming that Live Nation and Ticketmaster should be broken up.

“Though AOC may not like every element of our business, interestingly, AEG, our competitor, who is the promoter for Taylor Swift, chose to use us because, in reality, we are the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world,” he said. “Even our competitors want to come on our platform.”

“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s [sic] merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in,” wrote Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday, adding: “Break them up.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) joined Ocasio-Cortez in criticizing the merger, which occurred in 2010.

“When Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010, it was subject to an antitrust consent decree that prohibited it from abusing its market position,” wrote Klobuchar in an open letter addressed to Rapino.

“Nonetheless, there have been numerous complaints about your company’s compliance with that decree. I am concerned about a pattern of non-compliance with your legal obligations.”