Fred Rosen

If you loathe Ticketmaster for its infamous service fees or the software overload that cost you Taylor Swift tickets this summer, just know that Fred Rosen is unmoved by your anger. “The public brought all this on itself,” said Rosen, the 79-year-old former chief executive of Ticketmaster, who grew it into an inescapable presence for concert and sports fans in the 1980s and ’90s.

People frustrated with Ticketmaster are just lying in the bed they made themselves, insists the embattled company's former CEO. Fred Rosen, an attorney who ran the ticket-selling company from 1982 to 1998, has been watching the U.S. Senate hearings on Ticketmaster with frustration. U.S. lawmakers are looking at competition and consumer protections in the live entertainment industry. At the heart of the hearings is the Taylor Swift pre-sale fiasco, when more than 3.5 million people registered for a Ticketmaster pre-sale for the pop star's concert tour, and the system crumbled under the pressure.