The Cure’s Robert Smith has directly responded to fans’ complaints about the fees collected by Ticketmaster during the Cure’s “Verified Fan” sale for tickets to dates on their upcoming tour. “I am as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘fees’ debacle,” Smith wrote in capital letters Wednesday night 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.” Pitchfork has reached out to Ticketmaster for comment.
On Thursday night, Smith offered an update: “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,” he wrote. He also claimed that a $5 refund would go to “Verified Fan” accounts for other ticket transactions, and noted that tickets on sale tomorrow will have lower fees.
Earlier this week, Smith posted about the band’s decision to use Ticketmaster’s “Verified Fan” system in an effort to combat scalping and get more face-value tickets in fans’ hands. He said the band refused to participate in the company’s dynamic pricing and “Platinum” tickets, calling the program that led to tickets on Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band’s current tour to skyrocket to thousands of dollars “a greedy scam.”
Ticketmaster has been under fire for their business practices of late, facing a Senate hearing, multiple lawsuits, and the “unprecedented” fraud it claims forced them to shut out legitimate ticket holders from a Bad Bunny concert in Mexico City. Last year, the Justice Department opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment—the company formed after Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010—for potential abuse of power. An earlier investigation found in 2019 that the company had repeatedly violated a 10-year consent decree to refrain from monopolistic practices signed after the merger.
The Cure reissued their 1992 LP, Wish, last year. The band’s last studio album was 2008’s 4:13 Dream. Smith has since collaborated with Gorillaz and remixed Chvrches, Deftones, and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.
