Robert Smith comments on The Cure’s ticketing strategy: “Help us fight the scalpers”
The Cure are set to embark on a tour of North America in 2023. Ahead of tickets going on sale, frontman Robert Smith has spoken about the strategy that they have opted for to try and help “fight the scalpers”.
Controversially, The Cure partnered with Ticketmaster who are currently accused of holding a monopoly on the live industry, subsequently driving up prices and introducing damaging schemes like dynamic pricing whereby in-demand shows can see ticket costs rise.
Smith, however, has since said that the band had the final say on the “ticket pricing for this upcoming tour, and didn’t want those process instantly and horribly distorted by resale.” While touting is nothing new, it has recently grown to become a “multi-billion dollar industry” in North America, with new Apps and algorithms allowing for further exploitation of the system.
Thus, The Cure signed up for Ticketmaster’s new ‘Verified Fan’ strategy that the company allege reduces scalping by 80%. Ticketmaster state: “Artists choose to use Verified Fan to give their fans a better chance at buying tickets by creating an extra line of defense against bots and professional resellers who are looking to get tickets for profit.”
Essentially, this entails signing up with official details and registering your interest in a show before the tickets go on sale. Thereafter, when “demand exceeds availability, a lottery-style process will determine which registered Verified Fans get an access code for the sale, and which are put on a waitlist.”
Smith commented: “We were convinced that Ticketmaster’s ‘Verified Fan Page’ and ‘Face Value Ticket Exchange’ ideas could help us fight the scalpers.” And while he says the band didn’t agree to dynamic pricing, he accepted the backlash over the collaboration with Ticketmaster saying that “is far from a perfect system” and accepted that many of their policies are “a bit of a scam”.
Verified fan sale for The Cure’s North America tour goes on sale March 15th at 10am CDT.
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