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The Cure frontman Robert Smith has criticized artists who blame ticketing sites for fans experiencing high prices.
Smith, who has been a vocal critic of Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” system, made the comments after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into the events company over its handling of Oasis’ UK and Ireland ticket sales.
“I was shocked by how much profit is made,” Smith said of modern ticketing in a new interview with Matt Everitt shared to the band’s website. “I thought, ‘We don’t need to make all this money.’ My fights with the label have all been about how we can price things lower. The only reason you’d charge more for a gig is if you were worried that it was the last time you would be able to sell a T-shirt.”
Last year, Smith hit out at Ticketmaster after The Cure fans reported huge fees that doubled prices to see the English rock band on their Lost World tour. The singer eventually managed to negotiate a partial refund for customers.
“If you had the self-belief that you’re still going to be here in a year’s time, you’d want the show to be great so people come back. You don’t want to charge as much as the market will let you,” Smith added.
“If people save on the tickets, they buy beer or merch. There is goodwill, they will come back next time. It is a self-fulfilling good vibe and I don’t understand why more people don’t do it.
“It was easy to set ticket prices, but you need to be pig-headed. We didn’t allow dynamic pricing because it’s a scam that would disappear if every artist said, ‘I don’t want that!’ But most artists hide behind management. ‘Oh, we didn’t know,’ they say. They all know. If they say they do not, they’re either f***ing stupid or lying. It’s just driven by greed.”
After receiving swathes of criticism from fans over the prices for their reunion tour in the UK and Ireland, Oasis ruled out dynamic pricing for their North American tour dates.
The British rock band revealed in August that brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher would be joining one another onstage next year, for the first time since their infamous 2009 bust-up at Rock en Seine festival in Paris.
