So many peoples dreams were not made of strawberry lemonade...

[Demonhunter]

Not really an AIBU as I'm not the unreasonable one.

I didn't even try and get Oasis tickets yesterday, but I'm annoyed for those (including friends) who had an appalling experience with ticketmaster. It seems it was pre planned to kick people off, accuse of being bots when only one device being used etc.

What concerns me is the dynamic pricing. I know they've been subtly doing it for a long time, but if they can so publicly expose themselves to doing this with such a sought after tour, and get away with it, is this possibly the beginning of the end for big band tours?

Could the introduction of a new ticket system be possible do you think?

Wow I never even knew this. I couldn't have afforded it either way so didn't try.
This is so wrong! Didn't even know they could do this

Hugely frustrating, I agree, but I think a sense of perspective might help the fans manage their annoyance!

I had no interest in Oasis tix but I have friends who desperately wanted them.

Personally, I think Ticketmaster decided to profiteer because it sees touts getting away with charging way more than face value so they wanted in on that game, too. There is no other way to look at it. They new there was great demand before they even went on sale; it was designed that way, to sell out on the day. So they can't pretend the 'surge pricing' was anything but profiteering.

The whole thing is appalling and unfair.

taylor swift purposefully opted out of dynamic pricing for the eras tour. face value tickets were the same price regardless of demand. and there was a lot of demand, 22 million people tried to buy tickets got the singapore shows.

its just greed from oasis

No one is forced to buy them. They sold out so someone must be happy to pay the price!

I saw them years ago. I paid £35 for my ticket and I was underwhelmed and I was a big fan. Liams voice was bad live and the crowd was horrible.

DC were telling me that lots of Americans travel to the UK for big artists because dynamic pricing is standard there. Hundreds of dollars per ticket for terrible seats.

It's not TMs choice to have dynamic pricing on.

She did put on tiered pricing though with hugely over inflated package deals for some seats, which isn't conceptually a world away from dynamic pricing.

I was trying to get tickets for my parents, but when I joined the queue I asked them what their budget was. My mum very naively said they've said they're all £150, to which I said 'I'll believe that when I'm in and can see they're £150'. By the time I got to the front, £335 for an In Demand Standing Ticket.

I buy a lot of music tickets so it was no surprise to me, but I knew at the start there was no way I was getting a ticket at £150.

I would actually rather pay the touts £500 for a ticket than £335 for Dynamic Pricing ... at least the touts have had to put some effort in to get the tickets in the first place, and I'd rather reward that than TM's random price inflation.

It's a head and heart thing - people are booking with their hearts, they remember great times and want to relive that feeling.

Ticket master and Oasis are thinking with their heads - it's a business, the business of making money, simple.

The 2 will never mix

I got three face value tickets for Murrayfield. Total cost including fees was £389.

I had the lower price ticket in my basket, then the site crashed, when I eventually got back to the front of the queue they’d hiked them up.

that felt very very unfair.

Surely some of the problem as well is that people actually pay the inflated price? We were lucky to get tickets at the original price but no way would we have spent £350. If people are willing to pay it then they can do whatever they want!

The fees and additional charges were bad enough without this. Robert Smith was fuming last year cos The Cure didn't agree to the dynamic pricing but tickets still ended up double for some due to the additional charges they decided to whack on.

I saw something a while ago that said Pearl Jam once tried to avoid TM and it didn't work because of the monopoly they have over venues. Surely the whole ticket booking system needs an overhaul cos if they have the monopoly, its only going to get worse.

I completely agree with people who say artists need to stand up to TM and not consent to dynamic pricing, but the additional charges need investigating too.

Tickets were also on sale at Gigs and Tours and See Tickets who did not use dynamic pricing. IF you could get into their sites due to overwhelming numbers that is.

It all needs to be transparent from the outset.
Ticket prices are x
If deman reaches x level we may invoke dynamic pricing at x percent.
Fees are x.
Heres what we do for the fee. Here’s the percentage Ticketmaster/artist/promoter takes.
Never going to happen though.

I think the problem is how many tickets are released to each ticket system? Happy to be corrected on that, but I was under the impression (from others) that each company were given specific allocations to sell.

Yes I imagine TM had the largest share, absolutely.

I saw someone suggest earlier today that tickets should have been distributed in a lottery method. So you put in your card details to register for lottery and then they release a wave of tickets every day. Your card will be charged if you win them.

I’m not sure what pitfalls there are to this or if it’s a headache to do. I think that’s how Wimbledon operates though?

Noel and Liam are estimated to have a combined net worth of £52 million so I don't think they need to worry about their income.

By today's standards, that's tiny in terms of wealth. It was stated that the Manchester dates alone would make them over £20 million (whether this is true or not I have no idea) so of course this tour is driven by a desire to make more money - let's not pretend otherwise

Why, though? If you think it's too expensive or you can't afford it, you don't buy it. Knowing the ins and outs of the pricing structure doesn't change whether you can afford something or not. The queues are all virtual, so it's not as though people are wasting time and energy standing on a pavement in the rain to buy tickets, in which case they might have a point about dynamic pricing.

And if the shop want to do that, they're perfectly entitled to. They own the mars bars and can set whatever conditions they like for sale. If they have a limited number of mars bars and millions of people who want to buy them, that's probably going to result in very high prices.

Of course it's driven by a desire to make money, but £25 million each is not 'tiny' - even those Mumsnetters who complain they can't get by on their £150k salary surely wouldn't think so. If you have a 'mere' 2.6 million net worth, that is enough to get you into the top 1% of the UK population.

It seems to me from how aggrieved people are that expectations could have been managed better. It’s almost as if they designed the system to encourage panic buying.
If you’ve logged on thinking ‘ah well £150 for standing is my max budget’ and then that ticket rises to £355 unexpectedly, you’d be disappointed at best.
I accept you can vote with your wallet but it’s an emotional purchase as someone said earlier.
It was always going to be in demand; Oasis reforming was always going to command a premium. I get that completely.

I do see that, but fans would have to be hugely, hugely naive not to foresee this happening.

I also get that any die-hard fans who supported them 30 years ago in the days they were unknown might now feel cheated if they now can't obtain tickets.

But this is not a fairness thing, the tickets are not awarded to the most loyal or deserving fans. It's a money thing, pure and simple. As a pp has mentioned, if Oasis had any interest in pleasing their fans, they'd have reunited for One Love Manchester.

I remember watching One Love and the commentator said ‘and now something really special’, for a second I thought ah it’s Oasis coming out. No, just Liam 😂