RALEIGH, N.C. — Ticketmaster was in the hot seat on Tuesday as members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee grilled the president of Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster. The hearing stems from the fiasco fans faced when trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets late last year. During the hearing, the Live Nation president said bots were the issue.

What You Need To Know

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled the president of Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster

The hearing stems from the fiasco fans faced when trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets late last year

The president of Live Nation says bots were the issue, not Ticketmaster

One Raleigh dad and daughter say they were frustrated by the entire process to get tickets

A TikTok video that was posted by Lauren Taylor Carrillo went viral and now has more than one million views. The star of the video is her dad, Jorge Carrillo.

“The next day I think it got up to a million or like 900,000 [views], and it was crazy,” Lauren Taylor Carrillo said.

Jorge Carrillo was reacting to getting pre-sale codes for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, an artist both he and his two daughters love.

“You know as a parent and you're raising two daughters, that's someone you want to emulate. If that's what makes them happy and that's who they want to become, I'm all for that,” Carrillo said.

Unfortunately, that excitement didn’t last long. Like many fans, they had tickets in their cart, but they disappeared before they could buy them.

“So that was basically an all-day event. I started at 10 a.m. I think, gosh, about maybe 5 in the afternoon was when I just finally said, ‘OK, you know, that's not going to happen,’” Carrillo said.

The Carrillos say they were frustrated by the entire process.

“When you have an organization that controls the venue, controls the ticketing company and controls in some cases the artist, it's basically a bottleneck,” Carrillo said. “All roads lead to Ticketmaster and that's not just the bigger venues now. I mean, Live Nation recently bought the Ritz and now they're getting to the smaller venues. So if they could create that kind of dominance in the bigger venues, Ritz tickets [will go up too].”

“It's frustrating as an artist too, for Taylor Swift, I can imagine that her fans are having such a hard time getting tickets to just see her, and it shouldn't be that way. I think something definitely needs to change,” Lauren Taylor Carrillo said.“It's frustrating as an artist too, for Taylor Swift, I can imagine that her fans are having such a hard time getting tickets to just see her, and it shouldn't be that way. I think something definitely needs to change,” Lauren Taylor Carrillo said.

During Tuesday’s hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the ticketing company said the issues stem from robots buying the tickets

“The bots failed to penetrate our system to acquire any tickets. The attack did require us to slow down and even pause our sales. This is what led to a terrible consumer experience, which we regret. We apologize to the fans. We apologize to Ms. Swift. We need to do better and we will do better,” said Joe Berchtold, the President and CFO of Live Nation.

However, Jorge Carrillo doesn’t buy that.

“I'm sure they can create an algorithm, because I've seen other websites that do that. They can prevent them from taking them from the cart. Honestly, I think it's just an excuse just to not take ownership of the problem,” Carrillo said.

“It takes someone like Taylor Swift to be able to shine light on that. I'm sure that it's happened before, but they're not as persistent as Swifties are,” Carrillo said.

Luckily, the Carrillos have a neighbor who was able to get enough tickets for them too, so they will be able to see Swift live in the end.

As for Ticketmaster, around 70% of tickets for major concerts in the U.S. are sold through it. The Live Nation president also told lawmakers that Ticketmaster does not set prices, service fees or decide how many tickets will go on sale.

The Justice Department allowed Live Nation and Ticketmaster to merge in 2010. Now lawmakers are saying Congress should be asking if the department was right to allow that merger in the first place.