Joe GallopThe Cure has broken records with its latest tour in North America, despite singer Robert Smith’s push to lower the price of tickets.
The band has seen its highest-grossing tour and best attendance in the region ever for its Shows of a Lost World Tour in the US and Canada, which began this Spring.
As reported by Billboard, the tour grossed $37.5million (£29million) and sold over 547,000 tickets. The tour consisted of 35 dates, kicking off in May and finishing earlier this month in Miami.
According to the outlet, the highest-earning and most attended shows on the tour were the band’s three nights at L.A’s Hollywood Bowl (cap. 17,500), which grossed $4.9 million (£3.8m) and sold 50,800 tickets, and the three-nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden (19,500), which brought in $4.1 million (£3.1m) from 44,300 tickets.
The tour has earned more than double that of the band’s previous trip to North America, which achieved a high of $18 million (£13.8m) in 2016. The 547,000 tickets sold on the recent tour surpassed the previous personal best of 402,000 in North America after The Wish Tour in 1992.
An average ticket to see The Cure on the recent tour cost $68.54 (£53), which was 37% less than the average ticket cost among the top 50 tours on Billboard’s midyear recap.
It comes after Smith persuaded Ticketmaster to partially refund the fees it charged ticket buyers ahead of the tour back in March, having said they “sickened” him. He took to Twitter to air his frustration after reports that fans who had purchased tickets at $20 faced fees including a $11.65 per ticket service charge, a facility charge of $10 and an order processing fee of $5.50 per ticket.
Smith later said the band had cancelled 7,000 tickets across 2,200 orders found on secondary resale websites, in an attempt to tackle touts.