Just last week, legendary indie band The Cure announced they would hit the road for a North American tour this summer for the first time since 2016. Despite singer Robert Smith promising that a new album called Songs Of A Lost World would be released soon and it never coming out, fans quickly forgave the rocker so long as their tour with special guest The Twilight Sad would go out without a hitch. The Cure even attempted to put together an action plan to prevent scalpers from ruining their forthcoming tour for fans, but Ticketmaster is going to Ticketmaster.
Even though the live event conglomerate is allegedly working on mandating transparency in its ticket pricing for concerts in addition to enforcing a stricter pre-sale policy in response to its Taylor Swift The Eras Tour flub, fans of the band have joined the Ticketmaster hate train for a different reason.
While legacy acts like Bruce Springsteen had no problem with his high dynamic ticket prices as fans asked for them to be lowered (a pricing model Ticketmaster defended), The Cure purposely set their tour price ticket prices lowers, but Ticketmaster’s mandatory fees are still a hindrance. One user on Twitter uploaded a screenshot of their checkout screen, which lists ticket prices at $20 a pop while fees for those same tickets cost more than the tickets themselves.
the cure deliberately kept ticket prices low and @Ticketmaster was like “lol bet” and charges more in fees than the band is for the actual show pic.twitter.com/Ig0U5Ywcpw
— frank costanza’s lawyer (@_carrrmen) March 15, 2023
Others jumped in to share their frustration with Ticketmaster as well.
me walking out of ticket master HQ with the cure tickets shoved up my ass pic.twitter.com/rZYe85AbMU
— bebop mutual (@watergenasi) March 9, 2023
i love the cure, and i’d love to catch them on what’s likely to be their last trip out, and i think they’re doing what they can to try to keep tickets affordable, but this whole ticketmaster fan verified scheme is incomprehensible horseshit
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) March 15, 2023
$88 for two tickets to the cure (bad ones but nevertheless) made me realize how truly badly we’ve been getting scammed
— abi (@girlyoftheyear) March 15, 2023
i got $20 nosebleed tickets for the cure and i wanna cry omg
fuck you, ticketmaster for making me pay $20 in fees
everyday i pray for your downfall. hella thankful for the verified fan thing tho. it worked this time— rowan
(@crystalcoffins_) March 15, 2023
For the record, Smith seems upset by this, too: Yesterday, he tweeted, “(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!).”
(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!)
— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 15, 2023