The comeback of 90s Britpop’s chart-dominating bad boys, Oasis, is one of the biggest stories on the music beat this summer. A surprise reunion show Selling immediately in Britain and Ireland last week.
But the rush also introduces many fans to the frustrating vagaries of online ticketing, where prices aren’t always what you expect (and they usually go up).
Last weekend, after the first batch of shows went on sale, angry Oasis fans complained on social media that many tickets advertised at 148 British pounds (about $195) more than doubled to £355 (about $468). ) by the time they went to pay.
The band came under fire, and in Britain – where the group reconciled Long-time warring leadersLiam and Noel Gallagher were front-page news — politicians readily took up the cause.
“Almost half the country was probably queuing for tickets at the weekend,” Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said in parliament on Wednesday when asked about the furore. “But it is disappointing to hear about the price hike.”
It was the biggest uproar over concert ticket sales since Taylor Swift fans — and bots — crashed Ticketmaster nearly two years ago. Oasis fans and the news media pointed to “dynamic pricing”, in which fluctuations in demand could push the price of a ticket well above its original face value, often with little or no warning to the customer.
A British regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, said on Thursday that it is Opening an investigation In Ticketmaster’s handling of sales, “including how so-called ‘dynamic pricing’ may have been used.”
Also cited in the Oasis or system. In an announcement this week about adding two more dates to its tour schedule – bringing the total to 19 so far – the band said it had “no awareness at any time that dynamic pricing would be used,” though added that its managers and promoters “have a positive ticket sales strategy. agreed to, which will be a fair experience for fans including dynamic ticketing.”
Ticketmaster is mostly silent about this news. But in response to questions from The New York Times, the company disputed that Oasis sales involved dynamic pricing — at least as consumers generally understand that term, as a complex computerized system that results in constant, minute price changes in response to demand.
“Ticketmaster does not set prices, nor do we own or offer algorithmic surge pricing technologies,” the company said in a statement. “Additionally, Ticketmaster did not change prices during this sale – prices were established before the sale began.”
For fans who paid more than they expected, however, that difference could be a matter of splitting hairs. More confusingly, many fans noticed that Ticketmaster had marked the expensive tickets as “is in demand” In some ways, Spikes for those venues Ticketmaster calls “Platinum” pricing, in which, the company said, seats are “dynamically up and down based on demand”.
Larry Miller, director of the music business program at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, said in an interview that the result was the same in both cases — fans paid more.
“Whatever the tools are,” Miller said, adding that we were seeing a large and vocal number of fans who were disappointed that after spending hours queuing, they weren’t being offered the advertised price.
“Although it’s different, the higher price was achieved,” he said, adding, “Ticketmaster needs to do a better job of communicating that to fans queuing.”
Whether it’s used for Oasis tickets or not, dynamic pricing has been an important part of Ticketmaster’s tool kit for years. And despite some bad publicity when prices reach stratospheric levels, it’s largely been adopted in the industry as a way to increase sales and fight scalpers by pricing closer to what fans are ultimately willing to pay — an amount that’s often disclosed on resale sites. Like StubHub and SeatGeek.
The system has left many fans feeling exploited, though its larger implications are unclear. For his most recent tour, Bruce Springsteen — who has deliberately kept ticket prices low for decades — drew A rare blow While some seats go for as high as $5,000 due to dynamic pricing from fans.
Yet once the receipts for Springsteen’s global tour last year were tallied, the average price paid per ticket was just $110According to trade publication Pollstar. That was well below the $131 average price for last tier’s top 100 tours and a bargain compared to Drake ($260) or Beyonce ($209), who also used dynamic pricing.
And it’s not going to go away.
On an earnings call with investors in February, Michael Rapinoe, Live Nation’s chief executive, said the company was in the process of expanding dynamic pricing worldwide.
“Outside the US, we’re in first place,” he said. “We are just introducing this to the world. So obviously that’s a huge growth opportunity.”
NYU’s Miller described the Oasis ticketing problems as the latest in a series of controversies over fan access to the hottest concerts in recent years — such as Swift, Springsteen and Beyoncé — where it’s inevitable that demand will outpace supply. But often, fans feel not only left out but left out.
“Maybe this is a reality check,” Miller said, “for everyone in the live music value chain.”
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