The biggest takeaway from the Oasis ticket sale? People hate dynamic pricing.
All 1.4 million tickets for the UK/Ireland part of the Oasis reunion tour (yes, there will be more legs) dominated music news over the weekend because of (a) the huge demand and (b) dynamic pricing.,
If you’re not familiar with dynamic pricing, it’s an algorithm that kicks in under certain circumstances. Airlines have used it to sell seats. Hotels apply it to room rates. And we’re seeing it with concert tickets. This brings us to Oasis.
When tickets went on sale Saturday morning at 9 am GMT via Ticketmaster, demand was, as expected, insane. People queued for hours online and when many of them got a chance to make a purchase, they found that the price of a ticket had jumped. A lot.
The Guardian wrote this: “Shows were initially advertised at £148.50. But when fans finally reached the front of the queue, after many hours of waiting, many found that basic standing tickets had been rebranded as ‘in demand’ and had jumped in price to £355.20.”
Before we go any further, Ticketmaster cannot arbitrarily enact dynamic pricing. It can only happen with the blessing of the artist. In this case, Oasis (i.e. Noel and Liam) had to give the go-ahead as part of their contract. This is not a defense of Ticketmaster; it’s just the truth.
A better line of inquiry is the aggressiveness of the dynamic pricing algorithm. While it’s not illegal, it’s not very transparent. Imagine getting to the front of the line only to be surprised by a ticket price that was double what was advertised. There’s the problem.
An Irish politician wants an investigation. A British pol is also upset. There are at least 16 petitions demanding that someone do something. This could be the start of a big headache for Ticketmaster and the artists who give the okay to this bit of bait-switch ticket selling. (Don’t get me started on secondary sales. They’re…nuts.)
Meanwhile, Bob Lefsetz speaks the truth in a recent newsletter:
“And that’s a big brouhaha over here, about flex pricing on Oasis tickets. Seems the industry can never get it right, acts are afraid of charging what the tickets are worth, but they don’t want to surrender the upside to the scalpers. And the fans? Each and every one of them believes they deserve to sit in the front row for under a hundred bucks. And nobody truly wants a solution, the bands hide behind Ticketmaster, the politicians grandstand and the public is delusional. And there you have it!”
Nailed it.
Let’s back up and talk about hotels. A site called JournoFinder looked at room rates for hotels in markets where Oasis will play next summer.
The moronic part is increasing the price after the on sale time because the tickets were in high demand. They knew they were in high demand the minute the dates were announced. It’s not like more people suddenly tried to buy them two hours into the sale.
I am not sure it is so simple to say that Ticketmaster can’t set up dynamic pricing without the blessing of the artists. Because it would seem that TM would have a ton of bargaining power they can use to get them to agree. Especially in cases where TM or their parent company either own or have an exclusive agreement with the venue being used. I know in the case of Pearl Jam, in order to get a certain number of seats reserved for the fan club for a recent tour, they had to agree to a bunch of other seats be subject to dynamic pricing. And if they own venues I am sure they have all kinds of other ways to get things to work in their favour.