Show tickets: are the dice loaded against the fans?

Ticket sales for Oasis concerts in North America, including Toronto, open Thursday for fans with a special code. Just like Taylor Swift’s tour, that of the British group is sparking a real gold rush, which risks leaving many people disappointed.

The offer [en billets] is minimal and the demand is giganticnotes Danilo Dantas, professor of marketing at HEC Montréal.

This is a request repressedhe adds, given that Oasis hasn’t been on stage for 15 years.

Oasis also added a second concert date in Toronto on Wednesday in August 2025 at Rogers Stadium, citing a phenomenal demand.

It’s simply a market situationaccording to Professor Dantas.

It is not because Oasis is going to charge us very, very dearly for a concert ticket that we can say that access to culture is more difficult.

For him, Oasis is not a reflection of the whole culture, emphasizing that it is a single group. Tickets are also sold for thousands of events each year, without making headlines.

The sale of Oasis tickets for the general public, i.e. for fans who have not obtained a special code thanks to the lottery organized by the group, will begin on Friday.

Cheaper tickets for fans

The ticket seller Ticketmaster will not use dynamic pricing for North America, Oasis promised. This real-time price fluctuation, depending on demand, caused an outcry in Britain.

For Professor Dantas, the British group should go further to protect its admirers against excessive prices, by creating a real program of loyalty.

Currently, many stars like Oasis simply rely on the program of confirmed fans (verified fans) of Ticketmasterat the risk of the initiative being hacked by professional resellers, who only buy tickets to resell them at a high price.

Instead, artists could form a club of true admirers, who signed up on the group’s website and followed it over the years, Mr. Dantas says.

Oasis which itself independently of Ticketmaster identifies its real good and loyal fans and offers them benefits in exchange for their loyalty.

Your name on the ticket?

The best way to ensure that tickets go to fans, and not to resellers and their mass purchasing software (bots), is to display the buyer’s name on the ticket, according to economics professor Pascal Courty.

Each ticket has a name and only this name can come [au concert]a bit like when you take a plane.

If the ticket holder is unable to do so, he can return his ticket to Ticketmasterwho reimburses it and sells it to another admirer at the same price, to avoid the overbidding linked to resellers.

Professor Courty says that artists like Ed Sheeran used this nominative approach.

He admits, however, that there are additional costs for organizers, even if only to check the identity of spectators at the entrance, especially if it is a crowd of 50,000 people, For example.

I think that concert producers and promoters will have no choice [d’adopter l’approche du nom]adds Professor Dantas. After a while, we have to come up with a technological solution.

For him, amateurs perhaps have more weight than they think. He cites the example of the group The Curewho banned the use of dynamic pricing for his concerts, in response to complaints from his fans.

If people are really angryhe said. The artist will find out.