Ticket sales for Oasis’ UK tour have been heavily criticised by fans due to difficulties in accessing the venue and skyrocketing prices.
The UK’s competition authority, the CMA, announced on Thursday that it was launching an investigation into ticket reseller Ticketmaster, following the fiasco on Saturday of ticket sales for the upcoming Oasis tour, due to dynamic pricing that sent prices soaring and angered fans.
The action “follows reports from fans of significant issues with Ticketmaster,” the regulator wrote in a statement, which will investigate whether “buyers were provided with clear information” and whether “consumer protection law was violated.”
It will also look at whether fans “were put under pressure to buy tickets in a short period of time at a higher price than they thought they would have to pay, which could impact their purchasing decisions.”
“It is clear that many people felt they had a bad experience and were surprised by the price of their tickets when they went to checkout,” CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said in the statement.
“We want to hear from fans who have gone through the process and may have encountered issues,” she added. This feedback can be provided via an online form.
Dynamic pricing at the heart of the debate
The Gallagher brothers announced in late August that they were reforming Oasis, an iconic Britpop band, for a series of concerts in the United Kingdom and Ireland, sparking huge excitement fifteen years after their split.
But the chaotic sale of tickets on Saturday for the Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin dates – all sold out during the day – sparked anger and frustration among buyers, who faced numerous outages on saturated sales platforms and were unpleasantly surprised to discover at the last minute that “dynamic pricing” had caused prices to soar.
Faced with the controversy, the British government has promised to look into these controversial methods of selling concert tickets, particularly the pricing practice which has caused the price of some tickets for the tour to soar from £150 to over £350.
Morning Retail: Dynamic pricing causes controversy – 03/09
Dynamic pricing “which involves a company adjusting its prices according to changing market conditions, including high demand, is increasingly widespread” and “although this practice is not automatically illegal, it may in certain circumstances infringe consumer protection or competition law”, notes the CMA.
Ticketmaster had assured that it did not set the prices of concerts and indicated on its website that this criterion depended on “the organizer of the event”, who determined the price “according to the market value” of the seats. In a statement sent to the British press agency PA, the group defended itself Wednesday evening from being at the origin of this unexpected price increase.
In total, more than 1.4 million tickets were sold on Saturday, the BBC estimated. Oasis announced on Wednesday two additional London concert dates in September due to “phenomenal demand” for its summer 2025 return tour, and will change the way it sells tickets.
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