One positive thing to come out of this weekend’s debacle over Oasis tickets might be the end of so-called ‘dynamic pricing’ when it comes to live gigs.
The Culture Secretary has promised to add the issue of the practice to its upcoming review of the ticket resale market. Lisa Nandy MP said yesterday that: “After the incredible news of Oasis’s return, it’s depressing to see vastly inflated prices excluding ordinary fans from having a chance of enjoying their favourite band live.”
“This government is committed to putting fans back at the heart of music. So we will include issues around the transparency and use of dynamic pricing, including the technology around queueing systems which incentivise it, in our forthcoming consultation on consumer protections for ticket resales."
“Working with artists, industry and fans we can create a fairer system that ends the scourge of touts, rip-off resales and ensures tickets at fair prices.”
Most of us will have experienced ‘dynamic pricing’ without knowing it. You know when you’re about to pay for a flight and as if by magic the price doubles just as you’re putting in your debit card number?
That’s dynamic pricing. The demand that you’re showing in itself pushes up the price and of course Oasis tickets were very much in demand at the weekend.
This led to some ludicrous rises. Fans who had been waiting for hours in a queue for standing tickets at the lower price of £135 were, once they got to the front of the queue, being charged £337.50 (plus fees).
In Ireland, the basic price of a ticket for the Croke Park gigs was – supposedly - €86.50. But some fans were eventually being asked to cough up €415.50.
So who’s to blame? Sean Adams, manager of Charlotte Church and co-founder of the website Drowned In Sound called on MPs to investigate the practice and also said that artists were complicit: “Change really needs to come from artists...Why does a ‘band of the people’ go along with these corporate dynamic ticket policies that feel like it rips off fans who had the same chance of joining a digital queue as everyone else?”
Ticketmaster? Well, its website insisted the pricing was decided by the “event organiser”, which in the case of Oasis is promoter SJM Concerts. They, in turn, said Ticketmaster had “priced these tickets according to their market value”.
One industry expert - Reg Walker of the Iridium Consultancy, who has spent 40 years working in the live sector - doesn’t think Ticketmaster is an innocent bystander in all this: “The reason they push it (dynamic pricing) is that if you sell a ticket at £100, at 10% service charge you get £10. If you sell it at £400, you’re getting £40.”
“So it’s in Ticketmaster’s interests to push this model. I’m not convinced that artists know what they’re getting into.”
Whoever’s the blame, it’s not on.
