The Cure Fans Furious That Ticketmaster Fees Cost More Than Tickets, Robert Smith Responds: ‘Sickened’

Twitter exploded with furious accusations Ticketmaster The Cure charged more for concert tickets than they did.

“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,” One viral tweet states. One viral tweet included a screenshot of the transaction breakdown showing a $20 ticket fee along with a facility charge and service fee. Order processing fees can add up to even more.

This cure intentionally kept ticket prices low. @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

This tweet had been viewed more than 10,000,000 times as of Thursday. 

These tickets were made available as part of Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program. This program discourages scalpers from purchasing ticket batches and reselling them at a higher price. 

The Cure Guitarist Robert Smith reacted to Ticketmaster this week with several posts on Twitter.

“I am as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘fees’ debacle,” The 63-year old musician shared his thoughts with fans. “To be very clear: the artist has no way to limit them,” He posted Wednesday night. “I have been asking how they are justified. If I get anything coherent by way of an answer I will let you all know.”

“We had final say in all our ticket pricing for this upcoming tour, and didn’t want those prices instantly and horribly distorted by resale,” The guitarist had tweeted previously on Tuesday. 

“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.” He referred to dynamic pricing in a follow-up. “a greedy scam – and all artists have the choice not to participate … if no artists participated, it would cease to exist.”

In all of his tweets, the founding member of the band insists that they agreed to Ticketmaster’s suggested ticket sales strategies to combat scalpers.

Ticketmaster has been under fire numerous times over the last few months. Fans complained about dynamic pricing, and problems with verified fan ticket sales. Taylor Swift’s performance at the Grammy Awards was one of the most talked about. “Eras” tour tickets Sale It crashed the entire system because of “extraordinarily high demand.”