Ticketmaster has overhauled how it sells tickets for Oasis concerts after the Competition and Markets Authority found fans queuing for the band's reunion shows were not told that standing tickets were being sold at two different prices, with prices jumping once the cheaper tier sold out.
The problem emerged during the frenzied sale for the Oasis Live '25 reunion tour in 2024, the band's first shows since splitting in 2009. Millions of fans waited for hours in online queues, and many who reached the front found tickets priced far above the advertised level — in some cases more than double, with standing tickets rising to around £355 from an expected £148.
The outcry was immediate. Fans described the experience as a betrayal after a 15-year wait, resale listings appeared at more than £1,000, and the controversy reached Parliament. Oasis said they had left ticketing decisions to their promoters and management and had not been aware dynamic pricing would be used, while emphasising that resale was restricted to face-value channels.
The CMA's investigation eventually concluded that dynamic pricing, in the sense of prices moving automatically with demand, had not been used. Instead, it found a tiered system that fans had not been warned about: cheaper standing tickets sold first, and once they were gone the price rose. The watchdog said Ticketmaster must now tell fans 24 hours in advance if tiered pricing is being used, give clearer information in queues and improve how it describes what buyers are actually purchasing.
Ticketmaster welcomed the confirmation that it had not used dynamic pricing or breached consumer law, and said it had voluntarily committed to clearer communication about prices in queues. The government presented the undertakings as a template for fairer ticketing across live music.
The practical effect was visible in the sale for the band's newly announced 2027 tour, which sold out its run of UK and international dates. Buyers had to pre-register, were randomly selected and received unique non-transferable codes for allocated buying windows — a structure designed to shorten queues and reduce the chaos, scalping and price shocks of 2024, with fixed standard prices published in advance.
The Oasis ticketing row has become the defining British example of a wider argument about live music: whether scarcity, demand and technology entitle sellers to surprise loyal customers, or whether transparency is the minimum fans are owed. The regulator's answer, now written into Ticketmaster's commitments, is that surprise is not acceptable — even when, as the CMA found, the mechanism behind it was not quite the one fans assumed.