The Cure’s Robert Smith Urges Louisiana Legislature to ‘Empower the Artists, Not the Scalpers’

The Cure‘s Robert Smith is not done fighting the good fight on behalf of his band’s fans. The British goth rock legend who is about the launch his Shows of a Lost World North American tour in New Orleans on Wednesday (May 10) posted a series of tweets on Monday (May 8) in which he lashed out at a bill under consideration by the Louisiana legislature (HB 341) that would restrict the resale of tickets between fans.

“THE LOUISIANA LEGISLATURE (HB #341) IS CONSIDERING A RESELLERS-BACKED BILL TO BAN FAN-TO-FAN EXCHANGES (LIKE THE ONE WE ARE USING ON OUR 2023 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR TO TRY AND LIMIT/STOP SCALPING AND BOTS),” Smith said of the bill sponsored by Republican Paula P. Davis that has already passed the GOP-dominated State House which would allow tickets to concerts and sporting events to be legally resold at a profit under specified conditions.

Smith noted that the bill is now headed to the State Senate — which also features a GOP majority — with a hearing scheduled for Wednesday morning. “LOUISIANA LAWMAKERS! PLEASE DON’T PASS THIS BILL! EMPOWER THE ARTISTS, NOT THE SCALPERS AND THE BOTS!,” the singer wrote. “COMMERCIAL LOBBYING CORRUPTS DEMOCRACY X.”

Am abstract of the bill reads: “Proposed law provides for certain definitions with respect to event ticketing. Additionally, proposed law defines ‘nontransferable ticketing’ as prohibiting the resell or exchange of a ticket or limiting the ticket holder to exchange the ticket exclusively through means provided by the ticket issuer. Proposed law provides that a ticket issuer may use a nontransferable ticketing system only if the ticket holder is offered to purchase the same ticket in a transferable form at the initial time of sale.”

Smith’s issues with the proposed bill make sense given his recent broadsides against what he called Ticketmaster’s exorbitant extra fees on tickets for the band’s tour. Earlier this year the bandleader said he’d hoped to keep seat-buying fair and simple for fans by opting out of TM’s dynamic pricing model while shielding them against scalpers with non-transferable tickets. But when the sale opened mid-March, disappointed customers found that TM had added sky-high fees to tickets that sometimes totaled more than the face-value price of the original tickets.

In a series of follow-up tweets, Smith revealed that approximately 7,000 tickets across more than 2,000 orders had been canceled in early April, with the bandleader claiming those tickets were acquired with fake accounts and/or listed on secondary resale sites.

See Smith’s tweets below.