Oasis promises NOT to use dynamic pricing for the North American leg of their reunion tour. Here’s how much they might cost.
When Oasis tickets went on sale in the UK and Ireland about a month ago, fans were outraged when prices jumped due to high demand. Dynamic pricing for concert tickets is like what we see with airline tickets, hotel rooms, and Uber rides. And it’s not Ticketmaster that decides this. Only the artist can authorize this.
The sh*tstorm in the UK and Ireland was huge as fans complained of bait’n’switch tactics as prices jumped in real-time, even as people waited in a Ticketmaster queue. Oasis had to apologize and made arrangements to remove dynamic pricing from a couple of UK shows.
They want to make it clear that this will NOT be a problem in North America when tickets go on sale at 12 noon local time on Friday.
“Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model will not be applied to the forthcoming sale of tickets to Oasis concerts in North America. It is widely accepted that dynamic pricing remains a useful tool to combat ticket touting and keep prices for a significant proportion of fans lower than the market rate and thus more affordable.
“But when unprecedented ticket demand (where the entire tour could be sold many times over at the moment tickets go on sale) is combined with technology that cannot cope with that demand, it becomes less effective and can lead to an unacceptable experience for fans.
“We have made this decision for the North America tour to hopefully avoid a repeat of the issues fans in the UK and Ireland experienced recently.”
Okay, fine. Two thoughts.
- Without dynamic pricing, more tickets are going end up with secondary sellers resulting in more tickets selling for higher prices.
- Oasis is leaving a TON of money on the table. The margin between the face value and the selling price on secondary sites will go to the scalpers, not the band. I have a real problem with that.
In other words, be careful what you wish for.
So how much will Oasis tickets cost for the shows in Toronto, Boston, Chicago, and LA? I hear US$79 to a top-end of about US$375 plus applicable fees.
And how well and how fast will tickets sell? Hard to say, other than 10 million people in 158 countries tried to get tickets for gigs in the UK. There were only 1.4 million tickets available, too.
