Taylor Swift Wants Her Money Back

The superstar tightens the way he concert tickets are sold—and scalpers aren’t happy

- Lucas Shaw

Taylor Swift’s most recent tour was a success by every measure. Named after the best-selling album of her career, 1989, it grossed more than $250 million worldwide, the top tour of 2015. Critics raved about the production, with one going so far as to say it was “engineered to be the best night of your life.” Yet Swift felt something was missing—about $85 million in revenue that went to scalpers.

Some 30 percent to 40 percent of tickets to the world’s top concerts are resold on secondary websites such as StubHub and SeatGeek. Many of those sales are by scalpers who believe people are willing to pay far more than the initial price to see stars of Swift’s magnitude; they double and sometimes triple the ticket price. Thousands of Swift’s die-hard fans, Swifties, spent huge sums the singer never saw. That didn’t sit well with Swift, who is as much an entrepreneur as she is an artist.

As she prepared to hit the road to support her latest album,