Did the controversy over dynamic ticket pricing take the shine off Oasis’ reunion tour?

The joy of the Oasis reunion was marred for some fans when they were confronted with prices that had more than doubled while waiting for hours in a virtual queue. Will the ensuing row over “dynamic pricing” have lasting effects?

Oasis fan John and his family planned a major operation to buy Oasis tickets on Saturday – he on his phone and iPad at work in Burnley, his wife and son on their phones and laptop at home in Cumbria, and his daughter on her phone in Leeds.

“My wife and son took the train to Leeds, changed trains and were constantly on the phone in the queue,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“My wife said she saw a lot of other people in the same situation, all staring at their phones, trying to buy tickets.”

By the afternoon, after six hours in the online queue, John had given up, but his wife was finally offered tickets – for £355 each.

“I just think it’s a disgrace,” he said.

Oasis have “built their careers on the connections they have with ordinary people,” said John.

“But when you’ve been standing in line all day and the ticket price has more than doubled, I just think they’ve broken their contract with the working class.

“For me, they’re as good as dead now.”

John and his family were among the many affected by the dynamic pricing of the Britpop band’s long-awaited reunion tour.

Some standard standing tickets advertised at £135 plus fees have been re-labelled as ‘in demand’ on Ticketmaster and re-priced at £355 plus fees.

“You can’t spend all day online trying to buy tickets, expecting to pay a certain price, and then you get to the front of the line and the line doubles,” John said.

“It’s outrageous.”

Another fan, Nicholas from Macclesfield in Cheshire, told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Nicky Campbell: ‘It’s greed, plain and simple.

“You will be viewed very differently.

“The band should be asked difficult questions.”

Ticketmaster explained that it does not set prices, saying that these are the responsibility of the “organizer,” who “prices the tickets according to their market value.”

Artists can choose to participate in or reject the dynamic pricing system, but it is difficult to say how much the Gallagher brothers themselves actually knew about the arrangement.

Ultimately, “promoter” refers to the event organizers – SJM, Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, MCD and DF.

The tour deal should also have involved the band’s booking agents and managers, who would have discussed it with the two reunited band members.

And opting for dynamic pricing would mean higher profits.

But were these decisions offered to the Gallaghers themselves?

In the past, some artists and their teams have opted not to use dynamic pricing – Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran are said to have not used it on their recent UK tours.

And The Cure frontman Robert Smith called it “a greedy scam.”

“All artists have the choice not to participate,” he wrote in 2023.

“If there were no artists involved, it would cease to exist.”

Other stars have stated that it was used on them without their direct knowledge.

In 2020, Crowded House stated: “The band had no prior knowledge of these ‘In Demand’ tickets and did not approve this program.”

They therefore asked Live Nation to refund the difference between the original face value price and the higher “asked” price.

Live Nation has been trying to make dynamic pricing a common feature in recent years, especially in the US.

But when the prize was used for Bruce Springsteen’s 2022 US tour, there was an uproar as ticket prices briefly rose to $5,000 (£3,800) before falling rapidly again.

The boss later said that most of his tickets were “completely affordable,” but that the money should go into the artist’s pocket and not to a black marketeer who would only resell the tickets at a similar or higher price.

“I ask myself, ‘Hey, why shouldn’t the money go to the guys who sweat three hours a night up there for this?'” he told Rolling Stone.

“Dynamic pricing has created the opportunity for this.

“And at this point we took the risk.

“I know it was unpopular with some fans.

“But if there are any complaints along the way, you get your money back.”

The Live Nation boss also said that dynamic pricing is gaining traction and that he wants to use this method more widely in both Europe and the US.

“The organizers are excited about it,” CEO Michael Rapino said in February.

“The artists can’t wait because now when they sell an arena in Baltimore or Milan, they look at the gross receipts and say, ‘Wow, we’re leaving too much for the bootleggers. Let’s set a better price.'”

But better for whom?

Ultimately, the Oasis shows on Saturday night were sold out.

“Basically, it comes down to supply and demand,” Schellion Horn, competition economist at accounting firm Grant Thornton, told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“There are people out there for whom this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and who are willing to pay that much.”

The real problem, however, is a “lack of transparency”.

People would have expected that prices would also vary for other services such as flights and hotels. “But here, people had in mind that they would get these lower ticket prices.”

“A lot of people finally made it to the front of the line, had invested four, five, six hours of their lives and felt very committed and suddenly had five minutes to decide whether they wanted to pay these higher prices,” Ms Horn said.

Music journalist John Robb, who recently interviewed Noel Gallagher for his site Louder Than Wartold BBC Radio 4 that the price fluctuations were “unfair”.

“The price should be the price,” he said.

“But maybe that’s an old-fashioned British way of looking at things.”

There must be legislation to regulate dynamic pricing, he added.

This is now an option after the government included the issue in its previously announced review of ticket resale following the outcry surrounding Oasis.

“There are a number of practices going on here where people are buying a lot of tickets and reselling them at a high price,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer told 5 Live on Monday.

“And that’s just not fair. It’s pushing people out of the market.”

Will the controversy damage Oasis’ reputation?

Possibly, but the reunion shows aren’t for nearly a year. And by then, fans who bought tickets may have just paid off their overdrafts and credit card bills and be ready to forget the cost and revel in the music.