Working class fans ‘thrown under the bus’ over Oasis concert price surge

Working class Oasis fans have been ‘thrown under the bus’ according to a politician in Ireland.

Opposition leader Mary Lou McDonald said working class Oasis fans “who got them where they are” are being “thrown under the bus” over the pricing system, which saw the cost of concert tickets surge.

Hundreds of thousands of fans who waited in online queues for tickets to the band’s gigs in Cardiff, Manchester, Edinburgh, London and Dublin were left shocked when they found that prices for standing tickets had rocketed by the time they finally got the opportunity to make a purchase.

Some saw previously standing tickets at £150 rocket to £400+ each due to dynamic pricing.

The Sinn Fein president said that the pricing system was “crazy”.

She added: “I saw somebody put it directly to Oasis that they’re a working class group, the working class got them where they are and they’re throwing them under the bus.

“The dynamic pricing … to me it’s crazy that permission would be given for concerts, without any notification as to the cost of tickets.

“I think it just needs to stop.

“We’ve raised this time and again. Louise O’Reilly has been very active on this question with government.

“This has happened with Oasis, but it’s happened with other concert and other acts as well.

“It’s completely unfair. You enter into a lottery, really, in terms of getting your tickets, rather than a straight transaction.

“Whether it’s Oasis or Taylor Swift, or the man on the moon who’s performing, the consumer should know what the price ranges are, that they’re fixed prices, and then everybody tries to get in first and get the tickets that they want.

“But this dynamic pricing has to end. It needs to be dealt with. We’ve called for it before, and I’m very glad now, maybe they’re all Oasis fans, that they’ve actually find any woken up to the fact that this is happening.

“About 500 quid nearly for a ticket. Come on.”

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the Government will get a “grip” on the issue of surge pricing after hundreds of fans complained about inflated prices for Oasis reunion tour tickets.

Some fans were left shocked by standard tickets more than doubling from £148 to £355 on Ticketmaster due to demand, and the Culture Secretary has pledged to look into the use of dynamic pricing in its forthcoming Government review of the secondary gig sales market.

Addressing the issue on Monday, the Prime Minister spoke to Matt Chorley on BBC Radio 5 Live and said: “This is really important, because this isn’t just an Oasis problem.

“This is a problem for tickets for all sorts of events, where people go online straight away, as soon as they can, and within seconds sometimes, sometimes minutes, all the tickets are gone, and the prices start going through the roof, which means many people can’t afford it.

“You have to stop that. We’re consulting on that.

“I do think there are a number of things that we can do and we should do, because otherwise you get to the situation where families simply can’t go, or are absolutely spending a fortune on tickets, whatever it may be.

“So we’ll grip this and make sure that actually tickets are available at a price that people can actually afford.”

Asked if that could mean changing the law, he said: “I mean, we’re consulting, and it may well mean adjustments, but there are a number of techniques going on here where people are buying a lot of tickets, reselling at a huge price, and that’s just not fair, and it’s just pricing people out of the market.

“And every parent will know, in relation to children, the pressure to get tickets for events, I certainly do.”

The Ticketmaster website said the prices of platinum and in-demand tickets were set according to their market value and were subject to change.

When asked about this issue by the PA news agency, Ticketmaster made clear it does not set the prices.

It is understood that the prices are set by the promoters, not the artists.

While thousands got the chance to buy prized tickets to concerts, many thousands more never made it that far and missed out completely.

Following the ticket furore, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received 450 complaints about Ticketmaster adverts for the Oasis gigs.

A spokesperson for the UK’s regulator of advertising said the complainants argue that the adverts made “misleading claims about availability and pricing”.

They added: “We’re carefully assessing these complaints and, as such, can’t comment any further at this time.

“To emphasise, we are not currently investigating these ads.”

Sylvia Rook, lead officer for fair trading at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI), said “dynamic pricing is an accepted practice for holidays, flights and taxis, the difference here is that consumers are informed of the price before they decide to make a purchase.”

She added: “In this case, the public were given a price for tickets, and were not informed until they finally got to the front of the queue, that the price had increased.”

“Dynamic, or fluid pricing, is not specifically prohibited by consumer protection law; the important factor is that consumers are not misled by the indicated price,” she added.

“It is a breach of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 if a trader misleads consumers regarding the price of goods and services, if that causes the average consumer to take a different ‘transactional decision’.”

According to Ms Rook, the CTSI “will be working with the Government to see how consumers can be better protected with regard to the sale of event tickets.”