Live Nation CEO addresses The Cure ticketing controversy and rising gig prices

nme.com:

The Cure‘s upcoming North American tour.Wishing to keep costs down for fans, the band opted out of Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing scheme, which Robert Smith described as “a bit of a scam”, and restricted ticket transfers in states where they were legally allowed to do so.

However, some fans attempting to buy tickets reported that Ticketmaster fees, including service fee, facility charge and order processing fee, exceeded the price of actual tickets, which Smith said he was “sickened” by.Smith was later able to convince the ticketing giant to issue small reimbursements to verified ticket buyers to compensate for “unduly high” fees.

He later had to ask Ticketmaster to explain why tickets in its promised face value ticket exchange were “weird” and “over priced”.Now, Rapino has weighed in on the situation on The Bob Lefsetz Podcast. “We were proud of Ticketmaster’s side,” Rapino said. “We did a ton of work with Robert, making sure [tickets] were non-transferable, that it would be a face value [ticket] exchange and verified, doing all we could to put all the roadblocks to deliver his ticket prices to the fans.He continued: “There was a screenshot of a venue, which wasn’t even a Live Nation venue… that showed a ticket service fee of $20 on $20.

It doesn’t matter whether justifying the service fee is a good idea or not, we have an industry where we have to build some credibility back.“I couldn’t defend in any version that we were going to add a $20 service fee to a $20 ticket.