Last week, Oasis announced that they were reuniting for the first time in 15 years. They’re touring in the UK and Ireland throughout July and August 2025. Tickets went on sale on Saturday, August 31, via authorized ticket sale websites such as Ticketmaster and a UK website, Gigs and Tours. You’d think that Ticketmaster, which has all eyes on it now thanks to it being under investigation by the US government and having royally f-cked up the opening day sales for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, would take care to not have any issues this time around. And…nope! A lot of people attempting to buy the tour’s more than 1 million available tickets faced error messages, got placed into a long queue, or got caught up in Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing crap. (The UK government is now investigating the dynamic pricing issue.)
Soon after tickets went on sale, they were already being put up for purchase via resale websites for thousands of dollars more than their listing price. Oasis quickly put out a statement announcing that tickets for their reunion tour could only be resold “at face value” through Ticketmaster UK and Twickets, an authorized resale website. Any tickets resold through other websites won’t be honored.
The sale of tickets for Oasis ’ reunion tour got off to a creaky start on Saturday as online platforms strained under demand from hundreds of thousands of fans. The Britpop-era behemoth led by brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher is scheduled to play 17 gigs — its first shows for 15 years — in Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin starting July 4.
More than 1 million tickets are up for sale, at prices starting at about 74 pounds (just under $100).
Some people attempting to get onto the handful of authorized sales sites, including Ticketmaster and Gigs and Tours, received error messages, while many others were informed they were in a lengthy queue.
Some managed to buy tickets through a presale lottery on Friday. Within hours, tickets began to be offered on resale websites for as much as 6,000 pounds ($7,800).
Oasis issued a warning, saying tickets could only be resold at face value through authorized sites.
“Tickets appearing on other secondary ticketing sites are either counterfeit or will be cancelled by the promoters,” it said in a statement.
Prices for the London, Cardiff and Edinburgh concerts range from about 74 pounds ($97) to just over 200 pounds ($260) for seats, and about 150 pounds (about $200) to stand. In Manchester, the cheapest tickets are 148 pounds ($195) to stand, with no seated option.
The costliest option is a 506-pound ($666) package for the London gigs that includes a pre-show party, admission to an Oasis exhibition, souvenirs and a “premium collectible item.”
Tickets for the Dublin shows start at 86.50 euros ($96) plus booking fee.
Ugh. John Oliver did a good segment on this topic a couple of years ago. I’m glad that Oasis enacted this, but I hate it for the fans that bought those tickets at jacked-up prices! Some of you said last week that you were planning on trying for tickets. Did anyone have any luck? I saw a few more prominent Twitter accounts mentioning that they were stuck in Ticketmaster’s waiting room of doom. It should not be this expensive or difficult to enjoy seeing our favorite artists live.
I know that artists like Billie Eilish have enacted the “Face Value Exchange” which only allows people to sell their tickets at the original price they paid for them. I wish that it would be the standardized norm across the board, though! It would also be great if there was incentive to fix the other issues with error messages, etc. My friend and I actually tried for Eras Tour tickets back in 2022 and after hours of waiting, we said screw it and gave up. Buying tickets should not be this frustrating, overtly expensive, or anxiety-inducing.
🚨Please note, Oasis Live ‘25 tickets can only be resold at face value via @TicketmasterUK and @Twickets!
Tickets appearing on other secondary ticketing sites are either counterfeit or will be cancelled by the promoters.— Oasis (@oasis) August 31, 2024
photos credit: Getty, Jonathan Brady/PA Images/INSTARimages.com, Adam Hampton-Matthews / Avalon, Farrell/Backgrid
Dynamic pricing on Ticketmaster ought to be banned. They already have a monopoly, now they’re price-gouging too.
Dynamic pricing should be banned full stop – its a shameful and downright vile scam to bleed money out of people.
I just wrote a book about an old-school music promoter and he said Live Nation & Ticketmaster don’t even make their money on tickets. It’s the service charges, inflated food and beverages and merchandise.
Something has to change.
It isn’t just ticket prices that get whacked up, hotels are doing it too.
I get that there is a supply-and-demand situation, and hotels will blame Covid, Ukraine or whatever, but the perception of openly gouging customers and poor value isn’t going away. Nor should it.
For hotels, its really annoying because it makes it hard to budget a trip. Sometimes this hotel is 200 a night, sometimes its a thousand. Generally speaking I understand supply and demand for concerts, hotels, flights – but there comes a point when it feels less like that and more like price gouging and I’m not sure where that line is.
What is so awful about price increases is that the extra money collected by companies isn’t going to the workers. It’s going to the stockholders and to buy yachts for CEOs. And most of us have retirement accounts that probably include these companies so what are we to do? We can’t protest because we are arguing against our future. But the companies aren’t adequately compensating their workers.
Yes! and a lot of times the increased prices come with FEWER services because the hotels, cruise ships, stadiums, etc aren’t hiring more people post COVID. they’ve realized they can get by with fewer and make more money and so they’re doing it. But that means longer waits for food, fewer housekeeping visits, etc.
For me I can wait for food or whatever, but its frustrating when the prices keep going up and the services being offered are going down.
I got through to buy tickets but by that time they had gone up from £150 each to £356 each because of ‘dynamic pricing’. I didn’t buy them. Not worth it.
Dynamic pricing has to be agreed by the band so I blame them as well as ticketmaster. Wembley can’t magically grow and allow more people in because of high demand. They knew these gigs would sell out, they knew that dynamic pricing would kick in and and that 50% of the tickets would net them 50% more income.
Oasis aren’t even all that. I was only trying to get tickets because my teenage son loves them.
Agreed. The bands agree to dynamic pricing, they can refuse it. Who needs ticket scalpers when Ticketmaster and the artist do it themselves.
How many countries does Ticketmaster have a monopoly in? Why would they bother improving their ticketing system and stop resale price gouging or dynamic pricing? It’s going to take years for the government gears to grind and stop them. What a mess.
Dynamic pricing is terrible and the face-value resale is a good rule – scalpers have no incentive to try and snap up tickets if they can’t make money on them and tickets are then going to people who really want to see the show.
Yeah, I don’t think the face-value resale rule is going to stop dynamic pricing or the huge price swings – obviously it isn’t at this point – but I think its a good first step.
At the weekend someone was trying to justify dynamic pricing by saying it stopped the scalpers doing business because the tickets are already extortionate. Nice try but NOPE. Everything just gets more and more expensive.
Go back to buying tickets at the “arena” box office.
Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you who this band is or any songs they play.
Just tell me ” hi, Boomer” and I answer
My 21 year old year old niece is a wheelchair user. When she got through (miraculously) for Eras tour tickets, she was told that all accessible seating was sold out – tickets had only been on sale for a few minutes. We checked StubHub and other 3rd party ticket sales immediately after – they had tons of accessible tickets available for the concert marked up over 200%. Her mom had to contact the concert venue directly for months to try and get the few tickets they hadn’t released. The system is so flawed its disgusting.
A friendly reminder that the Cure didn’t allow any of this on their recent tour. Bands have plenty of say in the matter.
Agreed. My boy Robert tried to avoid working with Ticketmaster. He couldn’t, but was very loud on Twitter about how angry he was with their business processes.
What’s frustrating is that really could have been the start of something, but other groups didn’t get on board. Not everyone is as established as the Cure, of course. This happened around the same time as the Eras tour debacle, but it’s the Eras tour that has made Swift such a force to reckon with, so maybe she couldn’t yet fight Ticketmaster in 2022. IDK. But Oasis for sure can afford to take on Ticketmaster for a reunion tour.
Taylor was still a huge star in 2022 – she could have taken on Ticketmaster at that point if she had wanted.
I absolutely agree that these marked up and resold tickets should be cancelled but the much bigger scandal here is the dynamic pricing that people didn’t find out about until the checkout when they had a minute to decide. Hours to get through and then it’s £100’s more than you were expecting. I saw some interesting quotes from a footballer about the psychology of gambling and why you go ahead and pay the extortionate prices in the moment when the pressure it on. All done with the approval of the band.
My boyfriend got four in the Friday night presale for £200 each but that includes a coach trip from somewhere in the country (that we won’t be on but it was the only option). It feels like one scam after another.