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Oasis tickets controversy: Is ‘dynamic pricing’ any better than touting?

Fans dismayed by ‘in-demand’ increases way above starting rate of €86.50

Some Oasis fans were asked to pay 400 per cent more than others. Photograph: Sam Boal/Collins Photos
Conor Pope's picture
Conor Pope
Sun Sept 01 2024 - 17:03

If a tout buys tickets for €86.50 and sells them for €415 it is considered an outrage and – as a result of recent legislation – a crime. But if a ticket-selling platform, promoter and band do something not dissimilar, it is known as dynamic pricing.

Many music fans, however, who sought Oasis tickets on the Ticketmaster platform on Saturday are likely to look back in anger at the notion of “in-demand pricing” as it was labelled by the ticket sellers.

The latest blight on mass entertainment sees prices quickly and automatically soar once a shrinking number of cheap seats are sold. Some Oasis fans were asked to pay 400 per cent more than others as a result of nothing more than bad luck.

[ Oasis sell out Croke Park after fans wait hours to buy tickets costing over €400 ]

When the Oasis comeback was confirmed last Tuesday the promoters MCD said tickets would cost “from €86.50″. When asked by The Irish Times for a broader price range it did not respond.

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It is now easy to see why.

Some with access to a presale last Friday got standing tickets for €86.50 – not including the Ticketmaster service charge but when the general sale started hours later the cost for many was closer to €175.

Within a couple of hours, and as a result of “in-demand pricing”, identical tickets were selling for €415, not including the service charge.

Those defending the pricing model – and there are some – say it’s no different from an airline selling the last few seats on a plane for more than those sold weeks or months in advance.

However, in all but the most exceptional circumstances, someone asked to pay through the nose for a plane ticket has choices – they can fly another day or time, or to a different place or with another airline. The chance of seeing Oasis on their comeback tour is a one-time-only thing and comes with emotional baggage for many and a window of less than five minutes to make the choice.

Oasis are, of course, not alone in using a dynamic pricing model rolled out in the US by Ticketmaster in 2018.

Bruce Springsteen found himself under fire two years ago when he toured the US and left fans shocked by tickets that sometimes reached over €5,000 because of demand-driven dynamic pricing.

Bill Werde, a one-time editorial director at Billboard, struck a chord with many when he said it was “hard to believe that Bruce Springsteen turned out to be the one to make music fans miss scalpers”.

The outcry drew a response from Team Springsteen. “We chose prices that are lower than some [other performers] and on par with others,” his manager, Jon Landau, said. “Regardless of the commentary about a modest number of tickets costing $1,000 or more, our true average ticket price has been in the mid-$200 range.”

While details of how ticket sales break down are a mystery, Springsteen’s camp gave Ticketmaster permission to release numbers suggesting that about 1.3 per cent of fans paid more than $1,000 with 88.2 per cent of tickets “sold at set prices”.

The Irish Times sought to establish what percentage of the tickets for Oasis were sold at a range of prices, including the so-called in-demand level but at the time of writing had not had a response from Ticketmaster or MCD.

Ticketmaster has repeatedly said pricing is not its business with the cost determined by artists, their management and promoters. That may be the case but it is also true to say MCD is part owned by global promoters Live Nation, which also owns Ticketmaster.

That is not all. Live Nation operates the 3Arena, the Bord Gáis Energy theatre, the Gaiety and the Olympia. It is behind Electric Picnic and Longitude and has strong relationships with the GAA, the IRFU and the FAI, among others.

In 2020 a Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) investigation found that in 2012-2018, Ticketmaster had more than 90 per cent of the Irish market so it is not without influence.

It seems that the CCPC will not heed calls for a fresh investigation, pointing out there are “no price controls in Ireland, apart from in certain, limited areas”. Businesses “are allowed to adjust their prices in response to demand, or other factors, once an accurate price is displayed to the consumer in advance of the sale”, a commission spokeswoman said.

However, the US Department of Justice is on the case and seeking to challenge Live Nation, describing it as a competition-suffocating monopoly.

[ Ticketmaster antitrust case is box-office for frustrated concert-goers ]

“It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” US attorney-general Merrick Garland announced in May. “Fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services,” as a result of its dominance, he said.

In response Live Nation described the monopoly allegations as “absurd”.

But the story is likely to run both here and there.

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