Oasis Outrage: Are Ticket Price ‘Surges’ Finally Going To Be Tackled?

Oasis tickets went on sale over the weekend – did you get one?

If you were one of the half a million people who logged onto Ticketmaster.ie for 8am on Saturday morning, you probably didn’t even get the option to choose a ticket.

And if you did, you may have gotten a fright.

Tickets, which were advertised as starting from €86.50, were oftentimes reappearing for double the price at €176, while some fans reported seeing standing tickets on Ticketmaster for over €400.

Naturally, people were outraged. Spending hours waiting in a queue only to finally be presented with tickets that cost a week’s wages (if you got through to the buying page at all) is disappointing… and a new unfortunate reality for concert goers in Ireland.

It wasn’t long before Taoiseach Simon Harris got involved, condemning such price surges for tickets… and city centre hotels.

He said: “I would encourage everybody to engage fairly in relation to this. The issues around price gouging, around hiking up things at the time of major events, doesn’t actually help anyone but ends up giving our city bad reputation.”

Similarly, Tánaiste Micheál Martin dubbed ticket prices “quite shocking” and called on the industry to engage in some “strong reflection.”

“Clearly, it is beyond the reach of many, many people to purchase or to be in a position to be able to afford a ticket to a concert given the rampant acceleration of price increases,” he said.

“There is still time for redemption I would hope and I would hope all of those organising this could reflect on what has transpired because certainly there are a lot of disappointed people out there from the perspective of what they would see as price gouging.”

 

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Over in the UK, there has been similar disappointment. The government has said they plan to investigate significant cost hikes, with Culture Minister Lisa Nandy saying that it is “depressing to see vastly inflated prices.”

There continues to be confusion surrounding so-called “surges” in ticket prices. Dynamic pricing is a relatively new phenomenon in the music industry, and often leads to significant increases in prices for extremely popular gigs like Oasis, Taylor Swift, and Sabrina Carpenter. 

What happens is this: a fixed price is not set upon release. Instead, either the artist or the promoter (maybe even both?) decide to determine pricing based on demand. The more people want to get a ticket, the higher the cost.

Dynamic pricing is most frequently seen in hotel or flight prices – the cost increases on weekends, during the summer, or as we’re all too well aware, when a major artist comes to town.

Concert prices have been a major issue in the US for years, but dynamic pricing has only become apparent in the UK and Ireland in recent years. Fans in Britain have also had to contend with re-sale sites and something called ‘Ticketmaster Premium’, a service that releases tickets with a serious mark up after an event is seemingly already sold out.

Here in Ireland, it’s illegal to re-sell tickets for profit. Since 2021, The Sale of Tickets Act has made it an offence to ticket tout, however as of 2023, nobody has been prosecuted under the legislation.

On Ticketmaster.ie, fans are restricted from re-selling tickets at a higher price, but artists and promoters can still set ‘in-demand’ or ‘platinum’ pricing… and therein lies the issue.

Artists need to make a living, and promoters need to make money, but quadrupling the price of tickets in the knowledge that somebody, somewhere is going to be desperate enough to buy them can easily be seen as exploitative.

Securing tickets for your favourite show has already become considerably more difficult in the age of the internet. Gone are the days of superfans camping outside ticket offices, and phone lines ringing off the hook.

Now, anyone can log on and try their hand at nabbing a pair. As is their right. Just expect to shell out a whole lot more than you’d originally expected.

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• Oasis