Ticketmaster “may have misled Oasis fans” with unclear pricing when it put their reunion tour on sale last year, the UK’s competition watchdog has said.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the company may have breached consumer protection law by selling “platinum” tickets for almost 2.5 times the standard price, without explaining they came with no additional benefits.
“This risked giving consumers the misleading impression that platinum tickets were better,” it said in an update to its investigation into Ticketmaster.
The CMA has instructed Ticketmaster to change the way it labels tickets and reveals prices to fans in the future. Ticketmaster said it “welcomed” the advice.
“At Ticketmaster, we strive to provide the best ticketing platform through a simple, transparent and consumer-friendly experience,” a spokesperson told the BBC, via email.
“We welcome the CMA’s input in helping make the industry even better for fans.”
Dynamic pricing denied
More than 900,000 tickets were sold for Oasis’s long-awaited reunion tour, when they went on sale on 31 August last year
But many fans were left out of pocket, when standard standing tickets advertised at £135 plus fees were re-labelled “in demand” and changed on Ticketmaster to £355 plus fees.
Amid the fall-out, Oasis issued a statement saying they had no “awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used” in the sale of tickets for the initial dates.
The CMA launched its investigation in September, to examine whether Ticketmaster had engaged in “unfair commercial practices,” and whether fans were pressured to buy tickets within a short period of time.
Ticketmaster subsequently denied using “dynamic pricing” to manipulate prices.
“We don’t change prices in any automated or algorithmic way,” the company’s UK director, Andrew Parsons, told MPs last month.
He maintained that all prices are determined by artist teams and promoters – although, in the case of Oasis, the promoter, SJM Concerts, has ties to Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation.
Changes requested
The CMA did not comment on the issue of dynamic pricing, but said that Ticketmaster made it difficult for Oasis fans to make “informed choices”.
For example, it said, customers did not know that there were “two categories of standing tickets at different prices, with all of the cheaper standing tickets sold first”.
This resulted in “many fans waiting in a lengthy queue without understanding what they would be paying and then having to decide whether to pay a higher price than they expected,” the CMA continued.
The watchdog acknowledged that Ticketmaster had made some changes to its business practices since the Oasis sale last August.
However, it said, “the CMA does not currently consider these changes are sufficient to address its concerns”.
“We now expect Ticketmaster to work with us to address these concerns so, in future, fans can make well-informed decisions when buying tickets,” said Hayley Fletcher, interim senior director of consumer protection.
Downing Street responded to the report by saying “everyone deserves a fair shot at getting tickets” for music and sport events.
A spokesperson repeated a quote given by culture secretary Lisa Nandy earlier this year, when the government announced plans to cap the price at which tickets can be resold.
“The chance to see your favourite musicians or sports teams live is something that all of us enjoy… But for too long fans have had to endure the misery of touts hoovering up tickets for resale at vastly inflated prices.
“We’ve also seen cases where a lack of transparency has meant customers have been caught unawares by last minute price rises for high demand events.”
The spokesman added that a full response to the CMA consultation would be issued in due course.
Oasis’s tour is set to kick off in Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on 4 July, 2025.
