The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has urged Oasis fans to get in touch after thousands endured up to seven hours of queuing before being met with vastly inflated prices for the Gallagher brothers reunion tour.
The regulator told Marketing Beat it has already received 450 complaints about Ticketmaster, with the majority saying he ads made misleading claims about both pricing and availability.
A spokesperson said the ASA was “currently assessing the complaints” but stressed that it is not currently investigating the adverts.
The Oasis debacle comes as government ministers have said they will launch a probe into ‘dynamic pricing’, which occurs when a seller doesn’t set a fixed price for a product and instead changes it in response to demand.
For Oasis fans this meant tickets worth a face value of £148 – and initially advertised as such – were being sold for as much as £355 on Ticketmaster.
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Tickets for the Live 25 tour are now sold out but thousands of fans were left waiting all day in online queues, before being offered the inflated prices, with some being kicked out as suspected bots and others complaining the Ticketmaster website had simply crashed.
Responding to Oasis announcement on X that tickets had sold out, one fan commented:
“When I heard you were reforming, I was so happy. A fan since 1995, I queued for 7 hours to find tickets were £370 each. Not a price I can afford. You should have been transparent about dynamic pricing. Or not used it?”
When I heard you were reforming, I was so happy. A fan since 1995, I queued for 7 hours to find tickets were £370 each! Not a price I can afford. You should have been transparent about dynamic pricing. Or not used it? I now think wealth is more important to you than your fans.
— BexyDM (@Bexy991) September 2, 2024
“Face value unless it’s on Ticketmaster? Time to look back in anger” commented another.
Face value unless it’s on Ticketmaster? Time to look back in anger
— Paul (@PaulEyezOnMe) August 31, 2024
Taylor Swift collaborator Jack Antonoff also raised the issue to music-focused publication stereogum, highlighting that “it’s not ’cause of the artists”, calling on musicians to have the opportunity to opt out of dynamic pricing.
Featured image: Will Fresch, Flickr
