The Cure’s feud with Ticketmaster: A timeline of the full story so far…
The Cure frontman Robert Smith has criticised concert ticket enterprise Ticketmaster over the past week. The ticket-selling service has come under fire for excessive fees for tickets and difficulties keeping the tickets out of the hands of scalpers.
When both Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen launched major tours this past year, fans took to social media to express their dissatisfaction with Ticketmaster’s business strategy, including their controversial ‘Verified Fan’ scheme that has seen prices rise to extortionate figures.
After the announcement of The Cure’s latest tour, Smith spoke about what he saw as unfair business methods that ripped off his fans, calling it “sickening”. In light of Smith’s comments, Ticketmaster has also begun to change its usual method and is moving to keep the tickets in the hands of music fans.
Here, we offer a comprehensive look at what the ticket service has attempted over the past few months and what Smith has done to bring an end to their current practices. From the programs that sent fans into a frenzy to Smith’s words towards their much-maligned practices.
Why are Ticketmaster being criticised?
The criticism of Ticketmaster stemmed from the fees that they charge for concert tickets. Outside of what fans saw as indecent prices, music fans and politicians were concerned about the tickets going to scalpers instead of music fans for most of the site.
This included a major lack of available tickets for artists like Taylor Swift, with the pop star’s fans having trouble securing tickets for her most recent Eras tour. While tickets had gone on sale for Swift’s tour in November, different bots were able to log into Ticketmaster before the fans without any presale code.
This led to some Swift fans suing Ticketmaster and its parent company LiveNation, with one plaintiff remarking (via News Nation), “People were like, ‘These weren’t the terms I agreed on’. It’s not OK to be offering fans an opportunity to buy tickets at one price, but also without the ability to understand what they’re purchasing”.
While some fans did get tickets, they had to wait in extensive lines, with some lasting as long as 14 hours. Although the suits have been made in federal court, there have been talks to move them to the state level.
Who has spoken out against Ticketmaster?
Taylor Swift recently spoke out against Ticketmaster’s handling of her tour tickets, releasing a statement saying, “It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse”.
Swift had gone on to mention how frustrated she was about her fans not being given priority at Ticketmaster, remarking (via We Got This Covered), “I’m extremely protective of my fans. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do”.
Bruce Springsteen also came under fire when he was asked about his collaboration with Ticketmaster for his recent tour. When working with their tactics, seats for shows by ‘The Boss’ were selling for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also criticised Ticketmaster’s recent strategy, saying on social media, “Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with Live Nation should have never been approved, and they need to be reigned in”.
What has Robert Smith said about Ticketmaster?
In preparation for The Cure’s most recent tour, Robert Smith was “sickened” by the additional fans that his fans were being charged for a ticket. In a recent post on Twitter, Smith stated: “We didn’t agree to the ‘dynamic pricing’/’ price surging’/platinum ticket’ thing… because it is itself a bit of a scam? A separate conversation!”.
In another tweet, Smith called the dynamic pricing a “greedy scam”, remarking, “all artists have the choice not to participate…if no artists participated, it would cease to exist”. Smith went on to call Ticketmaster’s additional fees “sickening” in a further tweet, continuing, “I am as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘Fees’ debacle. To be very clear: The artist has no way to limit them. I have been asking how they are justified. If I get anything coherent by way of an answer I will let you all know”.
Smith further emphasised his point this past Friday, mentioning that out of the sellout shows for The Cure’s upcoming tour, “ABOUT 900 TICKETS WERE PURCHASED ABOVE FACE VALUE”. This was in reference to the ‘Verified Fan’ scheme that Ticketmaster had just begun.
What is the Ticketmaster ‘Verified Fan’ program?
The ‘Verified Fan’ program on Ticketmaster is a method to stop any potential scalpers from seizing tickets before fans can. On Ticketmaster’s website, the program’s job is to “analyse every registrant to make sure they are real people interested in going to the show”.
Despite its promises, many scalpers have gotten ahold of tickets, as well as bots that hold onto tickets before fans can. Smith has spoken out against fans buying from secondary ticket sites but has mentioned the problems with the ‘Verified Fan’ system, saying,
“We were convinced that Ticketmaster’s ‘Verified Fan Page’ and ‘Face Value Ticket Exchange’ ideas could help us fight the scalpers… we know it is a far from perfect system — but the reality is that if there aren’t enough tickets on sale, a number of fans are going to miss out whatever system we use”.
What has been done about the Ticketmaster system?
Later, Smith discussed his conversation with Ticketmaster and setting about refunding the money to the fans, explaining, “After further conversation, Ticketmaster have agreed with us that many of the fees being charged are unduly high, and as a gesture of goodwill have offered a $10 per ticket refund to all verified fan accounts for lowest ticket price (‘ltp’) transactions”.
Smith also offered “A $5 PER TICKET REFUND TO ALL VERIFIED FAN ACCOUNTS FOR ALL OTHER TICKET PRICE TRANSACTIONS, FOR ALL CURE SHOWS AT ALL VENUES; IF YOU ALREADY BOUGHT A TICKET YOU WILL GET AN AUTOMATIC REFUND; ALL TICKETS ON SALE TOMORROW WILL INCUR LOWER FEES”.
In light of Smith’s comments, Ticketmaster has posted updates about their high prices, responding to The Cure’s tweets, “This was on our radar early this morning and has already been resolved – refunds are in progress to fans for any costs over original ticket price. We stand with the band on their decision to use a Face Value Exchange and it will be enforced on our marketplace”.
After sorting through the problem with Ticketmaster, Smith offered one final tweet to his fans about the remaining dates: “thank you all for sticking with it… living and learning… see you very soon”.
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