Oasis Ticket ‘Dynamic Pricing’ Spurs Misplaced Fury
Dynamic pricing may be unpopular, but it’s an efficient way to match supply and demand.
Don’t look back in anger at Ticketmaster for using surge pricing to set Oasis gig ticket prices.
Photographer: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images EuropeThe use of "dynamic pricing" to sell tickets for the first Oasis concerts in 16 years has mired the British band's heralded reunion in controversy before it’s even begun. Fans waited for hours on Live Nation Entertainment Inc.’s Ticketmaster site at the weekend, only to see prices jump by multiples by the time they came to pay, prompting hundreds of complaints to advertising regulators, outrage from members of parliament and even the promise of a government probe. Some of the ire is misdirected.
We’ve heard this tune before. Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen are among artists who have run into similar furors in the US, where flexible ticket pricing has a longer history. In the UK, the sale of Harry Styles tickets using the method attracted criticism in 2022. The Oasis affair brings the issue to a different level of public attention, though.