Those seeking to book a seat at a concert or sporting event know “all too well” the frustrations of using Ticketmaster. Those annoyances, though, became an apocalypse as fans of the pop star Taylor Swift — known as “Swifties” — were stymied in their efforts to purchase places at their idol’s upcoming tour, “Eras.”

The “bad blood” flowing in Ticketmaster’s direction could mark a watershed moment in antitrust enforcement, meaning the regulation of monopolies to promote competition. According to Bloomberg Law, since President Biden took over in January 2021, the Department of Justice “has filed a record number of antitrust suits to block deals.”

The administration recently scored a victory when a planned merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster that would have created a publishing Leviathan fell apart. It did so after a judge blocked the deal on the grounds that it would suffocate competition and harm authors. Penguin paid a termination fee of $200 million.    

The first antitrust law, the Sherman Antitrust Act, signed by President Benjamin Harrison in 1890, aimed to be a “comprehensive charter of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition as the rule of trade.” The Supreme Court has held that the law bans “unreasonable” restraints on trade. Disputing what that means has been a “tale as old as time.”       

“Unreasonable” could describe Ms. Swift’s following. While she has long enjoyed a devoted fan base, the release of her latest album, “Midnights,” has generated a craze of Elvis Presley-like proportions. For the first time in Billboard’s 64-year history, the chart’s top 10 spots all were filled by one artist — Ms. Swift. The album smashed records on Spotify and Apple Music. 

It also set up Ms. Swift to take her act on the road for the first time since 2018. She describes the tour as a “journey through all of my musical eras.” That journey is set to begin in Arizona in March and conclude in California in August. Her performances will be sourced from across her recent oeuvre.

It fell to Ticketmaster to handle the sales, which turned out to be a nightmare dressed like a daydream. Three and a half million people pre-registered, and the website crashed on the first day after two million tickets were sold, yet another record. Ticketmaster acknowledged its inability to “accommodate the sheer force” of the Swifties. Some tickets have reportedly been listed at more than $40,000 on the resale market. 

Anger erupted, as Swifties were alternatively logged out of Ticketmaster or placed in online “queues” 2,000 persons long. The platform reported that its servers were “unable to answer” three and a half billion requests. Further sales have been canceled due to “insufficient remaining ticket inventory.” An executive noted that Ms. Swift could have filled “900 stadiums.”

In a statement on Instagram live, the pop star said she is “extremely protective” of her fans and that it is “really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.” She described herself as “pissed off.”

Ms. Swift is not the only one disenchanted with Ticketmaster, which merged with Live Nation, an entertainment company, in 2010 to create an events behemoth, Live Nation Entertainment. That merger was met with ire at its inception, and has rankled trustbusters since. Even before the L’affair Swift, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the ticket behemoth. 

Nor is this Live Nation Entertainment’s first brush with the DOJ. When courts greenlit the merger, they “prohibited the company from retaliating against concert venues for using another ticketing company, threatening concert venues, or undertaking other specified actions against concert venues for ten years.”

According to the government, Live Nation defaulted on those terms. DOJ noted in a 2020 press release that “Live Nation repeatedly and over the course of several years engaged in conduct that, in the Department’s view, violated” the terms of the merger. For that malfeasance, it has been subject to further surveillance of its business practices.

Ticketmaster’s flameout has prompted scrutiny from Congress, as well. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it a “daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reined in.” For the congresswoman, Ticketmaster’s “reputation” precedes it.   

Senator Klobuchar kvetched in a letter to Live Nation Entertainment’s chief executive officer, Michael Rapino, that “Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from competitive pressures.” She promises to “hold a hearing on how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industry harms customers and artists alike.”  

Attempting to “shake it off” when it comes to both rage and regulation, Live Nation Entertainment calls Ticketmaster “the most transparent and fan-friendly ticketing system in the United States,” and asserts that the live events industry has “never been more vibrant and competitive.” Mr. Rapino, the CEO, added that “there’s no nice way to tell 10 million Swifties that ‘there’s no tickets.’”