Tickets for Oasis went on general sale at 8am on Saturday morning but anyone hoping to secure themselves standing room or even a seat in Croke Park next summer simply by showing up on time is likely to have been disappointed.
The prices of some tickets left many users horrified with concert promoters MCD deploying a so-called dynamic, or in-demand, pricing model which saw some standing tickets more than double in price over the course of the first three hours of the sale.
By midday, there were still tickets up for grabs, although four standing tickets were priced at close to €2,000 when the service charges were added to the total cost with other so-called premium ticket packages costing even more than that.
And by the early afternoon Ticketmaster had confirmed that all the tickets that had been released for the two concerts had been sold although it did dangle the prospect of tickets selling in the future and encouraged fans to “check back later as more may be released”.
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There have been calls for the consumer watchdog to investigate the pricing for the Oasis concert amidst concerns that so-called “in-demand” pricing saw some fans asked to pay more than twice what other fans paid as the ticket sale progressed.
Dublin MEP Regina Doherty called for an investigation into Ticketmaster by Ireland’s Competition and Consumer Protection Commission “after thousands of fans faced 400 per cent surprise price increases for Oasis tickets“.
She noted that when ticket prices were advertised earlier this week, standing tickets in Croke Park were €86.50 plus booking fees " but when many people eventually got through the online queue this morning, they were faced with the exact same ticket at a price of €415.50. That’s not transparent advertising and certainly not fair to consumers”.
She said the EU’s Digital Services Act has sections included specifically to ensure large platforms that control aspects of the digital economy “don’t just make up their own rules that are unfair for consumers. I think Ticketmaster’s ‘in-demand’ pricing structure certainly needs investigating in this context. Every ticket for these gigs was always going to be ‘in-demand’ so slapping an extra label and €300 on some standing tickets is just extortionate”.
Seconds after 8am, there were hundreds of thousands of people waiting in a virtual line with some users reporting that as soon as the sale window opened, the systems crashed with their place in the queue being replaced with messages such as: “Error 503 backend.max_conn”.
But even those who were given seamless entry from the waiting room faced crushing disappointment with the vast majority a long, long way from the front.
Such is the popularity of the band – and the hype surrounding the reunion after almost 20 years – that more than 500,000 places were taken in the queue when people had logged on to try to buy tickets within 10 minutes of the sale starting. IT experts in the UK said there was a strong possibility that some tickets were purchased by computer bots.
One of the reasons highlighted by fans for the high demand for the Croke Park dates was the fact that the Irish sale opened a full hour before tickets went on sale for the concerts in Britain.
Concert promoters MCD did not explain why that decision was reached and also declined when contacted by The Irish Times to say how many tickets would be up for grabs as part of the general sale.
However the likelihood is that a great many of the 160,000 tickets were already snapped up by thousands of people who took part in a three-hour presale on Friday evening.
And with most of those in the market for tickets likely to buy either two or four, the chances of the hundreds of thousands of people who found themselves at the back of the queue being able to buy tickets at a price that could be considered in any way affordable was largely impossible.
Affordability was definitely an issue with many fans shocked by some of the prices being charged. The cost of a large number of tickets was substantially higher than the initial price announced.
In advance of the presale beginning, MCD said that ticket prices were starting “from €86.50″ not including booking fees, but with the Ticketmaster service charge included, the cost of a standing ticket to see the band came in at €176.75 with the price of many seats in the stands coming in at just more than €200.
And that was just the starting point when it came to prices.
As was the case for both Taylor Swift and Coldplay this summer, there were much higher prices attached to some tickets with some that came with an invite to a “pre-show party and exhibition fan package” selling for almost €550 and others that came with access to some merchandise selling for more than €400.
Within 30 minutes of the sale starting rumours circulated on social media that all the tickets were gone however, at 8.35am, Ticketmaster told fans that “the queue for Oasis is moving along as fans checkout. Tickets are still available for both dates so please hold your place in line”.
While that may have been true, the tickets that were left were at the very high end.
Fans shared their experiences with The Irish Times.
“We were 33,000 and got in just now,” said Yvonne Fahy shortly before 9am. “There are only €400+ tickets left.”
“It’s an absolute sh*tshow,” posted Brendan McDonald. “Loads of people I know unable to get on to the site in the first place. It took me 2 mins and by then there were 330k ahead of me. It’s the antithesis of Oasis Rock n roll! Bring back queuing outside HMV for a few hours, that was great craic.”
John Brophy said he “made it all the way to buy tickets. Only tickets left were high price premium. Tried to select anyway and – there seems to be a connection problem – sent back to queue”.
Joan Byrne’s daughter “got to the point of being processed for tickets and then the site crashed with that back end message”.
By contrast, Cillian Mac Bradaigh was one of the lucky ones and he got tickets on the presale “and found that it worked quite smoothly for a change”.
[ The Irish Times view on 1990s nostalgia: don’t look back in angerOpens in new window ]
George Thomson described the idea of putting the Irish tickets on sale first as “a brutal idea”, saying: “A pool of 160k tickets devoured by bots. In less than an hour, 1.5m tickets will hit the UK market while our share has been already hoovered up. Really disappointed from someone in the queue since 7.15am.”
Laura Buckley “started at 1,700 in the queue, which has never happened me before! I got as far as picking my tickets and then the journey ended!! It’s the hope that kills you”.
With the tickets selling fast it was inevitable that social media platforms would be flooded with people offering tickets for sale.
Fans should be aware that high profile concerts such as this one are a magnet for criminals and many of the “tickets” on offer are nonexistent with the chances of being scammed extremely high.
The proliferation of offers also prompted the Oasis website to issue a warning. “We have noticed people attempting to sell tickets on the secondary market since the start of the presale. Please note, tickets can ONLY be resold, at face value, via Ticketmaster and Twickets,” the post read.
“Tickets sold in breach of the terms and conditions will be cancelled by the promoters.”
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