Oasis, the band that everyone loves to sing along to after one too many pints at karaoke, is going on tour. Well, not exactly a tour, but more like a 17-date run in the UK and Ireland in the summer of 2025. Still, considering the band broke up in 2009 and just got back together, this is what most people would call a big deal. At the very least, the band’s notoriously feuding frontmen, brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher, could strangle each other onstage at any moment, and fans would hate to miss that, even if it cost them upwards of $1,000.
As soon as pre-sales for the band’s upcoming shows went online on Friday, tickets, which started at around $100 each, appeared on resale sites, with fans at X reporting they were seeing prices in the $800 to $1,200 range, even though the band said it had put up guardrails to prevent ticket prices from skyrocketing. The BBC reported that some tickets were sold for up to $7,800.
To participate in the presale, fans had to submit a ballot correctly answering questions about the band. Some who did so received a link to the presale tickets; others did not and were “devastated”, anticipating a“Bloodbath at Ticketmaster” during general sale, despite Oasis itself having warned that tickets sold for more than their face value would be “Cancelled by the promoters.”
On Saturday, things didn’t get much better. Fans who tried to buy tickets through online ticketing sites were met with long waits, apparently Hard to accept rates, error messages, robotsand reportedly error messages Claiming that the fans themselves were the robots..
“Efforts like advance ticket sales can be helpful in curbing the rush and chaos often associated with ticket sales,” says Benjamin Fabre, co-founder of cyber fraud firm Data Dome“but they are not foolproof solutions against sophisticated bot attacks.”
However, not all of the inflated ticket prices were the result of bots. After waiting hours in line, Some fans came to the front only to find the ticket price had more than doubleThis was due to dynamic pricinga model that implies ticket prices can change if there is high demand. When tickets began selling out on Saturday, fans urged bands and artists to oppose the use of dynamic pricing. (Ticketmaster did not respond to an email over the weekend seeking comment for this story.)
UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy confirmed on Monday that the British government will look into dynamic pricing as part of a planned review of how event tickets are sold, which is due to take place in the autumn. The review will investigate “issues around transparency and the use of dynamic pricing, including the technology around queuing systems that incentivise it,” Nandy said. He told the BBCJamie Stone MP, culture spokesman for the UK’s Liberal Democrats, said in a statement Statement to The Guardian over the weekend that it was “shocking to see our country’s most important cultural moments turned into obscene cash cows by greedy promoters and ticketing websites.”
