On Wednesday, Beyoncé finally announced that she’ll be hitting the road on a world tour behind her Renaissance album. When tickets for the highly anticipated tour go on sale next week, all eyes will be on Ticketmaster to see if they can avoid another catastrophe like last year’s botched Taylor Swift presale.
It turns out those eyes include the Senate Judiciary Committee, which sent a message via social media to the ticketing company on Thursday letting them know that they better not screw this up. The committee quote-tweeted a CNN news segment about the tour announcement that noted “the Beyhive prepares for another potential Ticketmaster meltdown following the Taylor Swift Eras Tour disaster,” adding, “We’re watching, @Ticketmaster.”
As with the Swift tour, demand for Beyoncé tour tickets is expected to be extremely high. This is the singer’s first solo world tour since 2016. “Fan demand already exceeds the number of tickets available by more than 800% based on the registration numbers in the Group A cities,” Ticketmaster said in a statement shared to its website. “It is expected that many interested fans may not be able to get tickets because demand drastically exceeds supply.”
The company will once again be using its Verified Fan system — the same system that was utilized during the Swift debacle — when tickets for the tour go on sale on Feb. 6. Ticketmaster warns fans on its site that registering as a Verified Fan does not guarantee tickets, and only verified fans who eventually receive a code through a lottery-style selection process will gain access to join the sale on a first-come, first-served basis.
Whether or not the company is able to get its act together this time around remains to be seen, but one thing’s for certain: two powerful entities, the Beyhive and the United States government, will be watching it closely.
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