Oasis tickets ‘shambles’ defended by industry chief

The Oasis ticket sales process has been defended by the boss of a ticketing industry body, after prices surged while fans queued online.

Many fans were furious to find tickets escalating in price as the sale continued on Saturday while others gave up queuing or were kicked out of the system while they waited.

But ticketing websites have been praised for coping with the “enormous demand” by Jonathan Brown, chief executive of the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers, who stressed prices were set by the band.

Throughout Saturday, hundreds of thousands of fans waited online to get tickets in the hope of being able to see Oasis live again, 15 years after the group disbanded.

Among those waiting was the government minister Lucy Powell.

The leader of the House of Commons bought two tickets for Manchester in July for £350 each.

She told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Eventually [I] got through and bought a couple of tickets for more than I was expecting to pay.”

She said she did not “particularly like” surge pricing, but added: “It is the market and how it operates.”

She added: “You’ve absolutely got to be transparent about that so that when people arrive after hours of waiting, they understand that the ticket is going to cost more.”

She also said that Labour had pledged in its manifesto to tackle ticket touting – where secondary sites sell tickets at vastly inflated prices, and there would be ta consultation on it in the autumn.

“Dynamic pricing” on Ticketmaster, where prices rise in line with demand, sparked criticism from many fans, after some tickets were set at more than £350 – up from £135 when the sale began earlier in the day.

Mr Brown told the BBC pricing is set “by artists and their management”.

Oasis and the band’s promoter have been asked for a response to this.

Dynamic pricing is not new and allowed under consumer protection laws.

Mr Brown highlighted how surge pricing is also used for hotel bookings and travel tickets.

“People are used to that shift in price,” he said. “I consider it unfair when a train ticket is much higher than I’m willing to pay.”

Asked why there was a spike in prices later in the day when there must have been high demand from the outset, he said he did not know.

While he accepted not everything had gone perfectly, he said people “underestimated” what a big operation it was and praised the ticketing websites for dealing with the huge demand.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Carol said she was “so disappointed with this fiasco,” after waiting four hours in the queue only to have her account suspended over concerns she was an automated bot.

Meanwhile, Mark wrote it was a “shambles” after he got close to the front of the queue on Ticketmaster, only to be told that an “unexpected error” had occurred.

Carol also said they had been “suspended” by Ticketmaster after it accused them of being bots – automatic computer programmes that can snap up tickets quicker than humans.

Mr Brown said technology is used to distinguish between a bot and a human being. Actions taken by a customer, such as rapid refreshing of a screen or using a VPN, could be seen to emulate a bot, he said.

“You have to have something in place that resists those bots, otherwise those tickets really are unfairly going to go to those people who are going to resell them,” he added.

Noel and Liam Gallagher announced on Tuesday they had put their differences behind them, confirming the band’s reunion.

The group broke up in 2009 following a brawl between the brothers at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris.

The Oasis comeback tour sold out by Sunday evening for all the dates the band announced for the UK and Ireland next summer.