Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past week (in which case, welcome back), you’ll have seen that Manchester indie-rockers Oasis have reformed.
The Gallagher brothers, who haven’t played on stage together since their acrimonious split in 2009, will be reuniting once more for a series of gigs across the UK – and, if their tweets are anything to go by, a worldwide tour might well be on the cards as well.
A long-awaited reunion it may be but, for fans of the band, it’s likely to be very expensive, too – and stressful.
But, for Oasis, it’s worth it. After all, they stand to make an estimated £50m from this tour: more than they ever earned while touring back in the day. And for Noel Gallagher, who is facing a costly £20m divorce from his wife Sara, the numbers clearly add up.
And boy, do they: ticket prices have been released, and they’re pocket-curdlingly high. For their Manchester gigs, fans will be charged £148.50 for general admission, with hospitality packages starting from £268. At Wembley, standing tickets will be £151, while seats will cost you anything from £74 to £206. In a cost-of-living crisis, those numbers sting.
To pre-empt criticism: Oasis are veteran rockers. They’ve sold 70m records, and they’ve been touring for years. They know how to put on a show, and they’re justified in charging high prices for that show.
The issue lies in the broken system fans will be using to try to get their tickets. Ticketmaster, which will be most fans’ main port of call on Saturday morning, has faced criticism for years over the way it runs its service.
The site, which is ageing, is prone to crashing – as it did when bookings opened for Taylor Swift’s monolithic Eras tour, leaving thousands of unhappy fans without tickets, or the chance to access them. In 2022, it also sparked a massive backlash when it introduced the concept of ‘dynamic’ pricing: essentially, altering the price of tickets, based on demand.
At the time, the site said it was doing this to stop touting (more of an issue in the US than the UK) and give more money to the artists, but that didn’t help fans, for whom the price surges have proved astronomically expensive.
Read More
And has it really stopped touts? Secondary ticket websites like Stubhub and Viagogo, which allow fans to resell their tickets, are still very much operational in the UK and also provide a platform for resale merchants to go about their business. Don’t be surprised to see Oasis tickets cropping up on many of these resale sales in the days and weeks after the official sale on Saturday – and don’t be surprised if the price tag on many of these exceeds £500. Maybe even £1000, if we’re being honest.
Given the number of fans who want tickets, compared to the actual number of seats available at the gigs Oasis will be playing, the mood is combative – a fresh wrinkle that has been thrown into the ring this time around is the storm that’s been brewing over who exactly “deserves” a ticket in the first place.
The toxicity has been all over my social media feeds for days: people who followed the band back in the ‘good old days’ complaining, for instance, both about the ticket prices and about the youngsters who have ‘discovered’ Oasis for the first time (some of whom can’t even remember a time when they were together), having the audacity to want to go and see them, too.
With people setting aside hours of their time to try to secure tickets, the instant resales that will follow, and the bad will that will likely foment on social media for weeks after, my instinct is it’s time for a rethink in the way we sell tickets.
Surely we need a new system here: one that lets fans enjoy the artists they want to see, at prices they can actually afford? In the feeding frenzy that will doubtless follow the Oasis gig sale, it feels very much like those fans are just collateral damage for those in pursuit of profits.
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
