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Oasis reunion tour tickets spike by almost 40 times face value

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Tan Min-Wei | August 31, 2024, 06:46 PM

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Hours after pre-sales started, tickets for legendary Brit-pop band Oasis's reunion tour are selling for around 40 times their face value.

Be here now

Oasis has been on hiatus for 15 years after a falling out between brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher.

But it was recently announced that the hiatus has come to an end and that the band would be touring the United Kingdom and Ireland, in a series of stadium tours.

On Aug. 30, the first set of tickets were released for presale, ahead of general sale beginning at 9:00 am local time on August 31.

Oasis' massive popularity and long hiatus have meant the demand for tickets is very high, having been pent up for so long.

Morning Glory

Perhaps unsurprisingly just after the three hour presale period ended, the BBC reported that tickets began to emerge on resale sites.

Tickets had been on sale from between £73 (S$125) to £205 (S$352), with standing tickets, generally considered the most desirable, going for about £150 (S$157)

According to a screenshot shared on social media, resellers had inflated ticket prices to about £500 to £700, at least four or five times their face value.

Some tickets were shown to be on sale for more than £6,000 (S$10,886), almost 40 times their face value.

The BBC reports that the £6,000 ticket had been for Oasis's London show, at Wembley Stadium.

But the other concert venues were not immune, with ticket scalpers posting listings of the concerts at Cardiff and Edinburgh for more than £4,000 (S$6,860).

Perhaps more surprisingly, tickets for Oasis's hometown concert in Manchester were listed at £2,500 (S$4,288).

Don't look back in anger

The band has posted on social media that it is aware of scalpers trying to sell tickets on secondary markets at high markups.

It has warned them, and presumably, their bias, that tickets can only be resold at face value through its official resellers.

It is also warned that tickets sold in breach of terms and conditions, i.e. at high markups, will be cancelled by the concert promoters.

Responses to the social media post show £6,000 (S$10,886) tickets being sold on StubHub, a competitor to the official sellers Ticketmaster and Twickets.

She's Electric

Scalping tickets for highly desirable concerts is not a new or unique concept.

When Taylor Swift was in Singapore, reports of scalpers attempting to sell tickets for extraordinarily high prices were extremely prevalent.

Worse yet, the limited availability of the tickets allowed scammers to take advantage of desperate fans, stealing significant sums of money from them.

The phenomenon was also repeated in the United Kingdom, where Taylor Swift closed the European leg of her Eras tour.

There were even reports that some were attempting to resell tickets for £10,000 (S$17,512), although it is not clear whether they succeeded.

Oasis did try to ensure that fans would be the ones getting their hands on tickets, with The Mirror reporting that they  implemented a quizz, asking questions like who the band's original drummer was.

But anti-touting advocacy group FanFair Alliance had a simpler solution: ban reselling of tickets for profit.

 

In its social media, the alliance pointed out that touts and scalpers were posting tickets at inflated prices... in the United Kingdom.

In Ireland, where resale of tickets for profit was made illegal in Ireland in 2021, major ticket selling sites were not able to make listings for Oasis's concerts.

This is unlikely to stop scalping altogether, but appears to have cut off a significant avenue, at least in one country.

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Top image via Stubhub & Oasis/X

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