The UK Competition and Markets Authority has threatened Ticketmaster with legal action over "misleading" sales of Oasis reunion tickets, accusing it of mislabelling standard seated tickets as "platinum" at up to 2.5 times the price and hiding tiered standing-ticket pricing. Thousands of fans paid far over the odds in the initial sale.
The CMA launched its investigation after the chaos of the Oasis Live '25 ticket sale in summer 2024, when fans queued for hours online for the band's first tour in 16 years. It identified two ways Ticketmaster may have breached consumer protection law. First, certain seated tickets were labelled "platinum" and sold for up to nearly 2.5 times the price of equivalent standard tickets — without extra benefits, and often in the same areas of the stadium — misleading customers into believing they were superior. Second, Ticketmaster allegedly failed to tell buyers there were two categories of standing tickets at different price points; the cheaper ones were sold first before the more expensive ones were released, causing long waits and forcing customers to pay more than anticipated.
Dynamic pricing compounded the damage: some tickets that started at £135 ended up costing more than £350, with fans given no warning that prices would rise during the sale. Ticketmaster has long said that promoters and artists set prices — not it — but the CMA's action is about what fans were told, and when. The watchdog is now threatening legal proceedings, which could end in court if the company does not change its practices.
The pressure is not only British. In Ireland, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission has charged Ticketmaster with two offences under the Consumer Protection Act 2007 over the August 31, 2024 sale for the band's Croke Park shows. The first charge alleges Ticketmaster offered "platinum" tickets in a way likely to mislead consumers about what they were; the second concerns price information that was unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely. More than 900,000 tickets went on sale that day, with Dublin standing tickets rising from €176 in pre-sale to more than €400. Ticketmaster's lawyer told Dublin District Court the case would be "fully contested", with around a dozen witnesses and expert evidence expected over three or four days.
For fans, the key question is redress: whether those who paid far over the odds will see compensation or refunds, and whether the CMA's threatened action forces lasting change to how Ticketmaster sells high-demand tickets. The Live '27 onsales — run under a registration model rather than open dynamic pricing — may already reflect the reputational cost of the 2024 sale.