Update: The Cure’s Robert Smith says he’s “sickened” by Ticketmaster’s fees
While tickets went for as low as $20, Ticketmaster's fees easily doubled the price
Music News Robert Smith
As The Cure prepares to head out on a lengthy North American tour, lead singer Robert Smith has detailed the ways in which the iconic New Wave band refuses to play into Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing schemes while working to combat vicious resellers.
Ahead of Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan sale, Smith explained that only those who go through the proper channels will be able to buy tickets, and once bought, the tickets are non-transferable. The idea behind the decision is to prevent scalpers from buying out the tickets and then reselling them at a higher price.
The singer recognizes the system is “far from perfect,” but says, “At least this one tries to get tickets into the hands of fans at a fair price.”
Smith also made it clear the band set the ticket pricing for each of the stops instead of utilizing Ticketmaster’s “dynamic” or “platinum pricing model, calling it “a bit of a scam.” Some seats were sold for as low as $20, in the hopes of keeping the show accessible to fans.
However, once verified fans were given access to pre-sale tickets, many realized that the cost of the tickets were less than the fees Ticketmaster piled on top of them, including services fees and “facility charges,” which in some cases more than doubled the final price of the ticket. While $40 is still considerably low to see a band as high profile as The Cure, it certainly doesn’t feel good to see your ticket price double due to a company’s money-grabbing fees.
Tickets for another high-profile tour, headlined by Drake and 21 Savage, also went on sale this morning. However, their team is now facing opposite issues as fans were quickly enraged by the sky-high pricing of the pre-sale seats, with one Twitter user writing, “Drake smoking dick with these ticket prices.”
It seems that when selling tour tickets nowadays, it doesn’t matter how an artist approaches the sale, Ticketmaster’s insatiable greed comes out on top. The company’s quickly becoming public enemy no. 1, and for good reason, as it continues to inflate the concert market and further complicate live events for artists and fans.
UPDATE, 3/16: After learning about the fees added on to tickets for The Cure’s upcoming tour, Smith once again took to Twitter to say he’s “sickened” by the selling process.
“I am as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘fees’ debacle,” Smith wrote in capital letters on Twitter. “To be very clear: The artist has no way to limit them. I have been asking how they are justified. If I get anything coherent by way of an answer I will let you all know.”
56 Comments
if The Cure managed to have fans grab tickets for 45$ each, I am calling this a win.
They wanted to make sure that tickets were affordable, and they did. They cannot control how much fees Ticketfucker charges.
There’s only so much they can do…
A large portion of those Ticketmaster fees flow to the venue and the band. Part of Ticketmaster’s business model is being the “bad guy,” allowing acts to effectively charge more for tickets while having someone else to blame for the prices.
anything to site for that? what is a “large portion”?
Literally none of those fees go to the band. The Facility Charge goes to the venue. The service fee goes to TicketMaster:
“A portion of ticket fees which include service fees we keep, helps us provide clients with software, equipment, service, and support to manage their tickets at the box office and provide the sales network used by clients to distribute tickets to fans and provide the sales network used by clients to distribute tickets to fans. The remainder, when taken with other revenues, is how we earn a profit.”
TM friggen owns/enables resellers who buy blocks of tickets when they go on sale and immediately flip for more money.
Lol I literally did not think online contrarian culture could possibly produce someone who was pro-Ticketmaster.Their fees don’t go to the bands. In their own words, a lot of it goes into their pockets.They are a flagrant monopoly, which is supposed to be illegal, but yknow, whatever.
A portion of the fees also go to cancer research and conservation of endangered North American birds. Get off Ticketmaster’s back!
Well actually, boot leather contains valuable nutrients that the body needs, and licking is just the most efficient way of transferring them. That’s just science.
so if part of the fees go to the band then what is the price of the ticket for?
so if part of the fees go to the band then what is the price of the ticket for?That’s obvious. It magically disappears, never to be seen by anyone ever again.
Someone help a non-American understand plz: It’s clearly not just Ticketmaster’s market penetration that makes people continue to use them, so who is mandating the use of Ticketmaster in this case? Are the venues only willing to work with them because they can get more money that way? Is it touring/booking agents who are insisting for some reason?Its clear everyone is trapped with Ticketmaster but who is making it hard to use another platform?
Exclusivity agreements with venues and labels, I’d imagine.
In many US markets there is no other platform as Ticketmaster has bought them out. They leave the old name to give the illusion of choice, but there really is only one place to go and that’s through them.
Our government unsurprisingly failed to stop Ticketmaster from creating a monopoly when they merged with (purchased) LiveNation. Live Nation was on the venue side owning and/or operating countless venues around the country and acting as a tour production company. So yeah, basically you can’t get tickets to much without it coming via Ticketmaster/LiveNation now. Most of the tickets I buy have about a 50% markup in fees from Ticketmaster on top of published price. So my $50 Cure tix woulda been about $75 just to feed Ticketmaster’s scam.
Oh that’s easy — Ticketmaster is the same company that owns or operates many of the venues. So they have a lot of leverage when it comes to big tours.
And what makes it worse is that a lot of venues around here seem to have eliminated the option of getting them fee-free at the box office.
Well yeah, because the monopoly owns the venue too – so they charge the same fees. But you save that $3.00 fee they levy for printing them at home!
Textbook definition of a monopoly. There’s zero excuse for this being allowed to continue.
Yup. Recently read the 1997 book Five Against One, the Pearl Jam book; there was a pretty good, understandable explanation of the stranglehold TM has: they have exclusive rights to just about any venue any band would want to play. So when PJ tried to circumvent the system way back when, they have a very hard time finding venues who would dare book them, and incur the wrath of TM. I just bought two tickets to see COunting Crows, because I am old … tickets were $60 each, which I think is more than reasonable to see them; junk fees came to $55 for the pair … REALLY hoping this talk of President Biden’s re: getting rid of junk fees goes somewhere, but I am not holding my breath.
As an artist, Ticketmaster has merged with or purchased so many other companies that you can’t avoid doing business with them.Ticketmaster is the biggest ticket seller, and LiveNation is the biggest music promoter. Both use their market dominance to push artists and venues into exclusivity agreements which further expand their market dominance. There’s many other tentacles to Live Nation (including artist management companies and such).Pretty good video on it here:
Many, if not most, large venues have exclusivity deals with Ticketmaster. If the Cure (or other big deal acts) were willing to play multiple nights at smaller venues they could figure out how to do so without Ticketmaster. That’s more work for less money, so it’s easier to let Ticketmaster ruin the fan experience and complain. I haven’t bought a single ticket through Ticketmaster in probably 6 years, but I also have the luxury of living in Chicago which has a wealth of independent-ish venues and also mostly only see more niche bands.
Even many of the smaller venues in my city are now run by a centralized promotion company. I think it’s just really hard to operate completely independently.
The government. “We the people” in our Constitution is just a joke at this point, it’s all about profit and corporations like Ticketmaster. The Supreme Court actually ruled that corporations are people, see “Citizens United” (also a joke of a name). Monopolies like Ticketmaster are supposed to be broken up, but politicians are fine with it if they fund their campaigns.
Its clear everyone is trapped with Ticketmaster but who is making it hard to use another platform?Easy, Ticketmaster and the US Government for refusing to stop them from becoming a monopoly. There aren’t other platforms that serve the big bands and singers.
Many years ago, one of my jobs at Tower Video was to run the Ticketmaster booth. It was usually the only way to get tickets to certaain events — even if you went to the stadium, thetaer, or club directly, the venue wouldn’t sell tickets — they’d refer people to Ticketmaster.Part of my training was to call services charges “convenience fees.” I was like, “Nope, nope. Making people go through Ticketmaster with no other choice in the matter is an inconvenience, not some kind of helping hand.” The trainer was a pretty neat lady, made her request again and we didn’t discuss it further.
Music industry professional here.Live Nation, which owns a vast number of concert venues, is part of Ticketmaster. If you want to play there, you must use Ticketmaster. Don’t like the fees? Too fucking bad, go play another venue. Can’t find another venue that size which isn’t owned by Live Nation/Ticketmaster? Too fucking bad.After the Taylor Swift debacle, there were congressional hearings, and reps from Ticketmaster sat and apologized, and claiming they had no idea what had happened, and they were working their darndest to fix the issue. There were brief talks about splitting the two companies up, b/c monopoly, which has led to….nothing.During the pandemic, somer smaller venues couldn’t pay the bills, so they were sold to – that’s right – Live Nation, so there are fewer independent venues now than ever. Bookers hate it, bands hate it, and they have the choice to play a Live Nation owned venue, or select from an increasingly small pool of indie venues, many of which are too small for bands to maker the money they need in order to tour and not end up in debt. Numerous bands have cancelled nationwide tours, concerned they will lose money even with great ticket sales.
They’re a monopoly after merging with LiveNation, with exclusivity agreements with the large venues. Our elected officials gave them a free pass over a non binding pledge to behave. Adam Conover has a pretty good explainer (and, for what it’s worth, he’s nicely toned down his schtick.)
This article is only relevant to maybe half of the people who bought tickets. Most of us were waitlisted from the “verified fan sale”, and so to secure a ticket were forced to go to third party sellers, which lured you in with “face value” prices before imposing fees on top of a more expensive ticket. I paid hundreds more than the lucky ones who made the lottery, for cheaper seats. What is so complicated about one universal pricing per venue?
In the immortal words of Frank Zappa: “Save your money; don’t go to the show”.
ah yes, anti-union Zappa who exploited all his band members and denied most of them royalties or appropriate credits. What a guy. Still, at least the kids get to squabble over all the money as the band members play dive bars and clubs.
Can’t wait to hear your smoking hot Captain Beefheart take.At any rate, they were all playing music Zappa composed. I think the only exception would be a few that George Duke penned, but I could be wrong.
What happened with that congressional hearing? Did they break up the monopoly?No, Ticketmaster just said they would make their website work better to more easily gouge customers.
And handed out the campaign donation checks to legislators shortly after.
Lmao Tolhurst
I used to go to lots of concerts in my youth. It’s insane that there is absolutely no way in hell I’d be able to do that now.
OK, but did the tickets sell? If so, they weren’t priced “too high”.
Put it in quotes all you want, but you know as well as I do that “too high” doesn’t mean “too high to sell.”
No, it means “I don’t want to pay more than the arbitrary amount in my head”. I get it.
You really don’t get it.
He’s not wrong, though.If the market will bear the prices, then that’s the market. Unless you’re ready to roll out a standard based on research across enormous data sets, “too high” absolutely *is* an arbitrary amount, as it varies from person to person.Me? I think that the definition of “too high” is different for me than, say, the weirdoes dropping a grand to see aging acts play neutered versions of their hits.
He’s not wrong, but he’s not wrong in a Walter Sobchak way.
Some songs need to be neutered. Think about ‘Bat Out of Hell’. You don’t want that thing breeding.
Ooo someone’s taken econ 101! The jokes aside, from the business’ perspective you are absolutely correct – the “right” price is whatever the market will bear. And with all the steps TM has taken toward becoming a monopoly (buying LiveNation, and competing ticketing platforms, etc.), concert goers have no options.It’s the same logic behind the insulin price hike. But at the end of the day, we’re all mad because TM is just a middleman, adding cost without adding any value and pricing a lot of people like myself out of a form of entertainment that used to be very accessible.
I’m curious how the non-transferable ticket thing will play out and if it actually helped discourage resellers or if they’ll find ways around it. I’ve seen some events delay delivery of e-tickets until a few weeks before the show, which solves the problem of logging onto the general sale and only finding resale tickets, but some resellers might still invest in hot tickets to jack up the prices later.
The non-transferable ticket worked well for me about a decade ago. I was able to get good tickets for face value to see Springsteen. You simply had to present the credit card used to purchase the tickets when you showed up at the venue. But I expect that Ticketmaster/Live Nation is now so powerful that they can simply refuse to allow it anymore, or at least make it so onerous to the artists that they won’t demand it for their shows.
I think it will play out reasonably well as it has in the past. You will still find tix on the secondary market but they can very easily be refused at the door and far riskier to purchase than normal.Ticketmaster needs their cut, so instead of some percentage, they probably use a minimum floor if the general ticket prices are cheap. I have a lot of friends who are Cure fans (me, as a bad goth, am a bit more ambivalent about them, as I like them well enough, but not enough to pay to go to their concerts) who got tix. They are pissed at the fees, but happy they didn’t have to sacrifice an arm like with Depeche Mode.
Basically why I don’t bother with shows anymore. I can handle a late night on a random Wednesday or Thursday. I can handle the idea that eating/drinking will be pricey or at least require some planning before/after. I can handle the idea that the headline act will (occasionally) take the stage whenever they God damned feel like it. I can handle the incidental costs (gas/tolls/parking).
All of that, ON TOP of paying near 200% markup for no good goddamned reason? Nah. I’ll throw on a live performance at home.
“While tickets went for as low as $20, Ticketmaster’s fees easily doubled the price”So, it *DID* work.
When was the last time you got a concert ticket for $40?
I have it on good authority that Ticketmaster’s servers run of the blood of sacrificed puppies, so some of those surcharges go towards puppy cremation costs.
I was going to see that Adrian Belew/Jerry Harrison show here in Chicago. $40! What a steal……until I found out that there was an additional $40 of service fees. It’s not like I couldn’t afford it. The show just wasn’t worth it to me at that price point. I have seen them both (separately) before. I also skipped Iggy, who I saw many times before. The last time I saw him, he had to rest in-between and during songs. I get it, he’s old…..but I’m not going to pay 3 times as much for a diminished artist.
As a father of three, I see very few affordable opportunities to take my kids to a concert, a sporting event, or pretty much anything I enjoyed as a kid. It saddens me.
Looking at the receipt now and yeah, my 3 tickets at $30 each got charged an extra $53 altogether. Between that and the fact that the TM website screwed out of better seating I’m a little ticked.But, good on The Cure for keeping the prices low. I was expecting a lot higher of an initial price for the tickets. I just wish i wasn’t sitting on the lawn at the venue.
I total screwed up and forgot to register as a verified fan in time. Resellers are already trying to sell $20 face value tickets for $115, plus another $40 in Ticketmaster fees. Premium tickets are being listed at ludicrous prices. I fucking hate scalpers. It used to be that at least they had to go to the box office, which was a pain, but now they can buy blocks of tickets. The worst part is that 1) the artist sees none of the resale markup and 2) many sites including Ticketmaster do no make it clear that you are buying tickets from a reseller. Hell, some of these resellers have probably not yet even bought the tickets they are listing.I’ve been going to shows for 40 years, and it’s almost not worth it anymore.
Update: I know the resellers are listing tickets that they have not even bought yet.
When I finally got in, the cheapest tickets in the nosebleeds were $60 before the add-on fees. I bailed.
Is there some way he could turn into a giant kaiju again so that he could destroy Ticketmaster’s HQ?