Jack Antonoff has taken a swipe at Ticketmaster after they claimed they had “caught” scalpers buying Harry Styles tickets.
Last month, the live events organisation said it had uncovered “scalpers with thousands of illegal tickets” to Styles’ huge upcoming Madison Square Garden residency, by identifying individuals that had used multiple accounts to get around the set limits.
Ticketmaster said they cancelled all of the illegal purchases and put them back on sale for “authentic” Styles fans, but one person who was unconvinced of the generous nature of the ticket seller was Antonoff.
Responding to a self-congratulatory X post in which they said they “caught scalpers with tickets” and “took action” to “get them back to fans at the original price”, Antonoff wrote simply: “You caught you?”
you caught you? https://t.co/AS545hU7Aq
— jackantonoff (@jackantonoff) April 22, 2026
The Bleachers frontman and acclaimed producer has been openly critical of Ticketmaster in the past, speaking out against dynamic pricing in 2023. “The whole thing is incredibly tough. There’s no reason why – if I can go online and buy a car and have it delivered to my house, why can’t I buy a fucking ticket at the price that the artist wants it to be? So it’s that simple,” he said.
“Look, I’ve asked very simple things of the industry. Let artists opt out of dynamic pricing. Stop taxing merch, and let artists sell tickets at a price that they actually believe. Don’t turn a live show into a free market. That’s really dirty.”
He has also called on venues to “stop taxing” merchandise sales in the past, and called out “the companies that own all these rooms and monopolise the whole fucking thing and post billions of earnings”.
Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation recently went through a seven-week trial that ended with a jury ruling it had been operating as an illegal monopoly and overcharging fans.
What happens next will be decided by the court, and one option could be to force a split between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. That, in theory, could open the market to smaller ticket sellers, ease prices and improve access for emerging artists trying to book venues.
Live Nation has consistently argued it competes “fiercely” with rivals, and did reach a settlement with the US Department of Justice in March in an effort to avoid a breakup. However, that deal did not end the wider case, which continued through state-led action. Some US senators have also questioned the settlement, alleging it was reached under “suspicious circumstances” and driven by political pressure rather than the public interest.
