The decades-long case of The American People vs. Ticketmaster has gained an unlikely ally in Robert Smith.
Earlier this month, the goth rock icon announced his band the Cure was hitting the road for a summer tour. And bucking the current pricing trends that have resulted in $5,000 seats for Bruce Springsteen, the 63-year-old Smith vowed there would be no dynamically priced or platinum tickets for the shows, which are priced “to benefit fans.” Would-be ticket buyers were told to sign up for Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program, which supposedly adds a layer of protection to ward off bots and scalpers.
(Dynamically priced tickets are akin to airline seats and hotel rooms in that the higher the demand, the higher the ticket price. Ticketmaster calls them platinum tickets, although they don’t come with any extra perks and they’re not necessarily great seats in the first place.)
Some folks were delighted when they were actually able to snag seats for the Cure at reasonable prices. But then came the fees. One fan tweeted his Ticketmaster receipt for four $20 tickets that showed a service fee of $11.65 and venue charge of $10, both per ticket, along with a $5.50 order processing fee, bringing the total to $172.10. (That person has since made their Twitter feed private and, presumably, retired to a darkened room to pet their cat, guzzle red wine and wallow in existential gloom.)
That got the attention of Smith, who made a remarkable move that the far more powerful likes of Springsteen and Taylor Swift have not. He got Ticketmaster to refund some of those fees to all ticketholders. A message on the band’s website says that Ticketmaster has “agreed with us that many of the fees being charged for the shows are unduly high, and as a gesture of goodwill” the company is refunding either $10 or $5 per ticket, depending on the type. That includes those who bought seats for the Cure’s sold-out June 8 concert at Xcel Energy Center.
Imagine that. Robert Smith fought Ticketmaster. And he won.
The move intensifies the light that has been shining on Ticketmaster since the ’90s, when Pearl Jam publicly took on the concert giant. Lawmakers made noise in 2007 when scalpers pushed Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana tickets into the thousands and did so again earlier this year after Springsteen and Swift on-sales turned into utter debacles.
Meanwhile, Ticketmaster has become more powerful than ever. In 2010, it merged with concert promoters Live Nation, creating a company that now sells the vast majority of arena-level tickets, manages the careers of artists and books, owns and/or operates venues across the country. Locally, that includes three of the largest stages in town – Xcel Energy Center, U.S. Bank Stadium and the Armory – along with smaller clubs like the Varsity Theater and Fillmore Minneapolis. (It’s also worth noting that publicly funded venues like the X and USBS have the temerity to charge an additional facility fee to the people who already paid for the places.)
Not only does Ticketmaster own the playground and its equipment, it also owns the park, the city and the state. During a Senate hearing on ticketing in January – when lawmakers wasted time quoting Taylor Swift song lyrics in their speeches – Sen. Ted Cruz asked Live Nation CFO and president Joe Berchtold if Ticketmaster is indeed a monopoly. His response: “We absolutely believe the ticketing business has never been more competitive.”
Seriously? If you want to see the Cure or Swift or Madonna or Beyonce, the only competition Ticketmaster faces is from scalpers, who bought their tickets from – you guessed it – Ticketmaster.
We live in an era where people carry amazingly powerful computers in their pockets and artificial intelligence creates works of art and college-level term papers in mere seconds. After decades of charging egregious service fees, Ticketmaster’s system should be flawless. The technology is there, as are the funds. And yet Ticketmaster refuses to make the process of buying tickets easier and, if anything, actively works to make it more difficult.
The system needs to change. An elderly goth made the first step. It’s time for fans, musicians – and much more importantly – lawmakers to demand that change. The monopoly that is Ticketmaster and Live Nation must be stopped.
