Oasis fans have waited 15 years for a reunion between brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher.
After burying the hatchet, the Gallaghers are touring for the first time together in years. However, thousands of their fans had difficulties scoring the sought-after tickets due to what U.K. culture minister Lisa Nandy has deemed Ticketmaster's use of "dynamic pricing."
The sale for the band's 2025 tour devolved into chaos on Saturday when reportedly fans gave up on securing tickets because they spent hours attempting to get through to the Ticketmaster queue. When fans did get through, the price of the tickets, which were advertised as £135 plus fees, went up to £350 plus fees. This is called dynamic pricing, where prices rise with demand, skyrocketing past what the average ticket was set at originally, The BBC reported.
Variety reported that thousands more couldn't even get through to buy tickets at all. Additionally, the tickets were immediately sold out following the difficulties in accessing them. Ticketmaster said the company does not set ticket prices, stating the "event organizer has priced these tickets according to their market value."
On BBC Radio 5 Live, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said, "There are a number of things that we can and should do. Because otherwise, you get to the situation where families simply can't go or are absolutely spending a fortune on tickets."
While dynamic pricing is not new and currently is allowed under consumer protection laws, Starmer said that the government will be considering the future of the law, which "may well mean adjustments."
"There are a number of techniques going on here where people are buying a lot of tickets, reselling them at a huge price. And that's just not fair – it's just pricing people out of the market," he said.
On Sunday, Nandy said she wants to end "rip-off resales" and work to make tickets accessible. She said it was "depressing to see vastly inflated prices excluding ordinary fans."
Moreover, Nandy said the government's insight into Ticketmaster would happen this fall. It will look at "issues around the transparency and use of dynamic pricing, including the technology around queuing systems which incentivize it," the BBC reported.
This wouldn't be the first time that Ticketmaster would be questioned by government officials for its ticket-selling practices. Last year, the U.S. Senate had a hearing on the lack of competition in the concert ticket industry after an unprecedented demand for Taylor Swift tickets for her Eras Tour resulted in a major system-wide failure. The ticket-selling company reportedly controls 80% of venue ticket sales.
Its control over the industry has made way for dynamic pricing and it "has the power to destroy venues and artists who refuse to work with them. They even have their own resale platform and they encourage ticket resellers to gouge fans," The Perfect Union's Cory Doctorow said.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster, alleging that the company engages in price-gouging, tactics to push venues into exclusivity contracts and other anti-competitive practices.
Attorney General Merrick Garland alleged that "Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry."
"The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster," he added.
