Bruce Springsteen on Ticketmaster backlash: ‘Well, I’m old’

Bruce Springsteen has finally spoken out about the backlash he received from fans, months after a Ticketmaster debacle that made ticketprices skyrocket for his 2023 tour.

And like Roger Murtaugh, the Boss is getting too old for this stuff.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Springsteen, 73, said that while he typically prices tickets under market value, it seemed like a good time to use Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model. That switch had some tickets going for $5,000 or more, prompting what some Boss fans called a “crisis of faith” about their fandom.

“What I do is a very simple thing. I tell my guys, ‘Go out and see what everybody else is doing. Let’s charge a little less.’ That’s generally the directions,” Springsteen said. “This time I told them, ‘Hey, we’re 73 years old. The guys are there. I want to do what everybody else is doing, my peers.’ So that’s what happened. That’s what they did.”

Ticketing, Springsteen added, has become “very confusing” for fans and artists alike — but most of the passes for his shows remain “totally affordable.” Some tickets, he said, will go for a higher price somewhere else, anyway.

“The ticket broker or someone is going to be taking that money. I’m going, ‘Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?’” Springsteen said. “It created an opportunity for that to occur. And so, at that point, we went for it.”

The move was unpopular with many fans, Springsteen acknowledged. He jokingly told Rolling Stone that “if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back.”

“Well, I’m old. I take a lot of things in stride. You don’t like to be criticized,” Springsteen said. “You certainly don’t like to be the poster boy for high ticket prices. It’s the last thing you prefer to be. But that’s how it went.”

Will Springsteen use Tickmaster’s dynamic price system in the future?

“That’ll be a whole other discussion when that comes around. I don’t want to say anything now, but we’ll see what happens,” he said. Amid the backlash, Springsteen’s manager said that fans were paying “a fair price to see someone universally regarded as among the very greatest artists of his generation.”

The Boss’ take on the situation comes amid a Ticketmaster fiasco for Taylor Swift, whose fans are experiencing high ticket prices and a lack of ticket inventory for the pop star’s The Eras tour. Swifties, like Springsteen’s fans, were similarly enraged — and, in Philadelphia, about 2,000 of them sent consumer complaints to the Pa. Attorney General’s office.

The “Shake It Off” hitmaker was swifter in addressing fans’ disappointment.

“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them,” Swift wrote in an Instagram story. “And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”