Last week the Cure made the bombshell announcement that they would tour North America for the first time since 2016. This obviously brought elation to fans all over the continent, especially in places that the Cure hadn’t visited in two decades. However, that excitement quickly had its legs cut out from underneath it when people started noticing that tickets were going to be sold through Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster has attracted no shortage of controversy recently. Between its dynamic pricing method inflating ticket prices to hundreds (or thousands) of dollars, crashing under the weight of Taylor Swift’s demand, and federal investigations into whether parent company Live Nation has violated anti-trust laws, public opinion of Ticketmaster has been overwhelmingly negative.

Many people across social media threw up their hands, resigning themselves from being priced out of seeing the Cure by the ticket seller’s dynamic pricing method (put simply, prices increase according to demand). This would be a high-demand tour even if it wasn’t the Cure’s first time in the states in seven years. Across my own news feeds, I saw people estimating ticket prices in the several-hundred-dollar range.

However, Robert Smith has made every effort to ensure that that wouldn’t be the case and employed a number of tactics to keep prices affordable. And while it’s not a perfect strategy, it’s a major improvement over Ticketmaster’s business-as-usual, and hopefully other tours will learn from it.

Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan System

The first strategy employed by this tour was Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan system. This isn’t a new feature for Ticketmaster—the program was first introduced in 2017 as an attempt to block scalpers from using automated programs from buying tickets out from under real people.

Before tickets go on sale, there’s a registration period where fans can express their interest in tickets. The system collects some information to verify their identity and then sends a confirmation email. When tickets do go on sale, only users who have registered as a Verified Fan can purchase tickets at launch.

If there are more registrations than available, registered users are selected via lottery. After the first round winners purchase or pass on their tickets, the wait listed users are selected by another lottery for the remaining tickets. The process repeats until the tickets are sold out.

Non-Dynamic Pricing

The biggest problem with Ticketmaster, even apart from automated scalpers, is the runaway ticket prices. Taylor Swift recently used the Verified Fan system for her “Eras” tour, and fans were still being charged multiple thousands of dollars per ticket (well, before the system was overloaded and crashed).

But for this tour, the Cure decided to disable the dynamic pricing altogether. Many fans were able to purchase tickets for as little as $20. Personally, I decided to upgrade to the $50 tier because they were so much more affordable than I anticipated. A few friends sprung for floor seats because they were so reasonably priced.

It’s worth noting that the Cure didn’t have to do this. This decision seems to be driven entirely by the band themselves, who would have benefited greatly from the inflated prices. It’s tempting, especially as a band of this level, to charge as much as fans are willing to pay. However, the Cure decided to put the fans (and ethics) first, and we are richer for it.

resell Restrictions

As another bit of cost control, Ticketmaster put restrictions on how tickets could be sold on the secondary market. Tickets for this tour are only able to be sold through Ticketmaster’s own reselling marketplace. Additionally, the resell price can’t exceed the face value of the ticket itself.

Along with the Verified Fan system, this removes any incentive that scalpers might have to horde tickets, further clearing the waters of any nefarious actors.

Robert Smith vs. Fees

Even though the face value of the tickets were kept low, Ticketmaster always charges their own fees. And in many cases—especially with lower priced tickets—the fees were nearly as expensive as the tickets themselves. $20 tickets incurred a fee of as much as $15 per ticket. The excitement across social media in getting tickets to see the Cure was mingled with outrage that the fees were so exorbitant.

And Robert Smith noticed. The same day the tickets went on sale, Smith posted on Twitter (in an endearing all-caps message) that he would look into it personally. Shortly after, it was announced that Ticketmaster would refund $10 per ticket for all bottom-tier tickets and $5 for all other ticket prices.

In the email Ticketmaster sent announcing this, they said “This is all thanks to Robert Smith,” which is code for “we wanted to bleed you dry, but Robert Smith caught us.”

There are Still some Problems

Of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect system—especially when that system is Ticketmaster—and there have still been some issues with this tour.

The first is the randomness of the Verified Fan lottery. While the lottery is intended to keep things fair, there are some unfortunate byproducts. I know a number of life-long Cure fans who weren’t lucky enough to be given the chance to buy a ticket. Granted, this is going to happen in any sort of situation where demand exceeds the supply, and any effort to level the playing field is going to have similar casualties.

Another big problem is the poor capabilities of Ticketmaster’s own infrastructure. Just like with Taylor Swift’s tour, fans in certain shows were derailed by system issues. A friend of mine in California was texting me in frustration as he got stuck in a login loop every time he got to the purchase screen. Judging from other posts across social media, he wasn’t alone there.

The biggest problem though is that the success of this particular tour was largely due to Robert Smith advocating for the fans of his own accord. The tickets were so reasonably priced because The Cure put the fans over their own profits and opted out of dynamic pricing. The fees were reversed because Robert Smith himself took Ticketmaster to task over it.

And while Robert Smith and Taylor Swift might have the clout to stand up to Live Nation, that can’t be said of 99% of the artists using the site to sell their own tickets. Ticketmaster is still functionally a monopoly, operating with near-impunity. This one tour might have avoided most of the problems typically associated with Ticketmaster, but it’s an isolated incident. Ticketmaster will likely continue to exploit fans while artists fail to find a reasonable alternative until they are forced to do otherwise.

However, this story does showcase just how much pressure larger artists can put on Live Nation. Hopefully, Robert Smith’s success here will inspire other artists to use their own influence to pressure Ticketmaster to change their practices.