When the band Oasis quit in 2009, fans protested against the use of dynamic pricing and the Ticketmaster cancellation on Saturday
The cost of some tickets went from $135 to over$500 when sales began. In an upcoming consultation on consumer protection for ticket sales, the UK will include issues surrounding transparency and use of dynamic pricing, including the technology around queuing systems which incentivize it, said UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.
Surge pricing is a system in which prices are pushed higher when demand increases. The practice doesn’t break any British laws, but was already criticized for restricting access to music, sports, and theater events in Labour’s manifesto before the party came into power on July 5th.
The band Oasis abruptly quit in 2009, after years of infighting between band members Noel and Liam. The sour public relationship between the brothers makes this an unexpected reunion tour for many fans, driving the intense demand for tickets.
“Efforts like presale ballots can be helpful in curbing the immediate rush and chaos typically associated with ticket sales,” says Benjamin Fabre, cofounder of cyberfraud firm DataDome, “but they are not foolproof solutions against sophisticated bot attacks.”
Not all of the inflated ticket prices were the result of bots, however. After waiting hours in the queue, some fans reached the front only to find the price of tickets had more than doubled. This was due to dynamic pricing, a model that means the prices of tickets can change if there’s high demand. As tickets started to sell out on Saturday, fans urged bands and artists to push back against the use of dynamic pricing. TheTicketmaster did not respond to an email over the weekend seeking comment on the story.
To be a part of the presale, fans had to submit a ballot correctly answering questions about the band. Some who received a link to a pre-sale tickets and others who didn’t weren’t as “devastated” because Oasis had warned that tickets that were sold for more than face value would be “canceled”.
As soon as the presale for the band’s upcoming gigs went online on Friday, tickets—which started at around $100 apiece—popped up on resale sites, with fans on X reporting that they were seeing prices in the $800 to $1,200 range, despite the fact that the band said it had put guardrails in place to prevent the cost of the tickets from getting out of hand. The BBC reported that some tickets were going for as much as $7,800.
