Olivia Dean Slams Ticketmaster, AEG Over Resale Prices: “A Disgusting Service”

Olivia Dean is calling out Live Nation, Ticketmaster and AEG over resale prices listed for her The Art of Loving Live Tour, claiming the ticketing services were listing tickets for resale at exorbitant markups to her disapproval.

“I’m sorry that there seems to be an issue with ticket re-selling and pricing,” Dean wrote on an Instagram story on Friday. “My team are currently looking into it. It is extremely frustrating as the last thing I want is for anyone to be scammed or overcharged for our show.”

She said that Live Nation, Ticketmaster and AEG “are providing a disgusting service,” further writing that “the prices at which you’re allowing tickets to be re-sold is vile and completely against our wishes.”

“Live music should be affordable and accessible and we need to find a new way of making that possible,” Dean said. “BE BETTER.”

Dean’s tour has quickly become one of the most anticipated concert events of next year, as the fast-rising best new artist Grammy nominee sold out dates at arenas around the world including Madison Square Garden and Crypto.com Arena. Amidst the general on-sale Friday, peeved fans posted screenshots showing tickets already on resale, marked up by hundreds of dollars within hours of the on-sale.

Since Dean’s public comments, Live Nation and AEG appear to have turned off resale. A source says AEG and AXS turned off resale for the shows on the ticketing system once they were made aware of the issue. (AXS, AEG’s ticketing arm, was only the ticketing platform for Dean’s Crypto.com Arena shows, and the rest of the concerts, including her other AEG-promoted shows, were ticketed by Ticketmaster.)

Ticketmaster made a comment of its own on Instagram after Dean’s comments, writing that “we support artists’ ability to set the terms of how their tickets are sold and resold,” further stating that the company is capping resale prices on the platform and encourages other ticketing platforms to do the same.

It should be noted that artists often exercise some level of control of their resale policies for their concerts. Hayley Williams, for example, decided to turn off ticket transferability and resale altogether in an effort to stop scalpers, instead only allowing resale through a face value ticket exchange. Chappell Roan did the same for her slate of buzzy shows this year, using AXS’s Fair AXS tech. (Artists aren’t allowed to do that in markets like Chicago or New York, where state laws don’t allow to limit ticket transferability.) At press time, it’s unclear what Dean’s team’s policy was, though she clearly wasn’t satisfied with the results during the sale.

Dean’s comments come amid an active period for live music policy, and amid increased frustration from fans about the fractured state of the live music experience. In the US Live Nation faces lawsuits from the DOJ and FTC over monopoly allegations and claims of coordinating with scalpers to mark up ticket prices. Live Nation has denied the allegations in both suits. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this year seeking to better enforce the BOTS Act, a 2016 legislation that was intended to stop brokers from using bots to get concert tickets but had only been enforced once since then.

Earlier this week, the UK announced plans to outlaw ticket resale above face value in an effort to curb ticket scalpers. Both Ticketmaster and AXS voiced their approval of the policy change, while resale platforms said the shift would cause a black market instead of helping.

“Ticketmaster already limits all resale in the UK to face value prices, and this is another major step forward for fans — cracking down on exploitative touting to help keep live events accessible,” Live Nation said this week of the UK law proposal. “We encourage others around the world to adopt similar fan-first policies.”