Oasis and Ticketmaster: Why the Calls for Government Intervention are Misplaced

Like many others, I set my alarm bright and early on 31st August for the highly anticipated Oasis reunion tickets which had been announced a matter of days before. Having seen Liam Gallagher perform Oasis’ debut album, ‘Definitely Maybe’, in full the previous weekend, my excitement for the band was as strong as ever. After what I would say was a fairly plain sailing experience, given how difficult I knew getting Oasis tickets was going to be, I closed my laptop at around 10.30am, an hour and a half after tickets initially went on sale, having secured tickets to see one of my all-time favourite bands. 

Easy, right? Well, after a brief scroll on X, I found this not to be the case. My timeline was full of people who had been queueing for hours as eager as I was, only to find the tickets to be as much as £360, way more than the initially advertised £150, when they reached the end of the queue. This is what Ticketmaster refers to as ‘Dynamic Pricing.’

Put simply, ‘Dynamic Pricing’ matches the simple laws of economics to ticket sales. As demand for a ticket begins to exceed the supply of tickets, the price increases of the good to incentivise more supply. However, this argument fails pretty early on. Unlike most goods, supply cannot increase as easily with ticket sales. The capacity of Wembley stadium is 90,000 and cannot be increased if 100,000 people attempt for tickets. The cries of outrage prompted the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to launch an investigation into the practice of ‘Dynamic Pricing’ as used by Ticketmaster.

I think we can all agree that this practice is unfair. Many argue that it puts unfair pressure on fans to buy the inflated tickets, as after hours of queuing, they feel pressured to checkout in the five minute time-frame Ticketmaster reserves your tickets for before they release them, should you choose not to purchase. Some also suggest that people buy the tickets as they feel that it would be a waste, after queuing in some cases for over six hours, to then walk away with nothing. This has led to calls for the government to intervene more broadly, suggesting that they price-fix tickets to ensure bands are not ripping off genuine fans.

It’s the age-old school of thought that the government is the answer to everything and with this, like many other things, it isn’t. Whilst the idea that the government should intervene with something akin to a price ceiling to cap the price of which promoters can charge sounds appealing, it shouldn’t be seen as the role of the state. Firstly, no one has a human right to an Oasis ticket. It is the definition of a luxury good; it is a want for pleasure, not a need to survive. If the government starts to intervene with music fans to cap prices, then where does it stop? Will we now expect the government to cap the price of clothes?

Secondly, messing with the market is proven to have consequences that aren’t always good. Price capping risks pushing suppliers out of the market and Ticketmaster, or other providers, may refuse to supply a service which they don’t think will make a satisfactory return for them. If consumers are unhappy with the price of a good in the market, they should simply refuse to buy it, and the supplier will bring the price of the good down to a new market equilibrium.

In the end, whilst it may seem unfair that fans are ripped off by Ticketmaster’s Dynamic Pricing, we cannot jump to the easy solution that this is a role for the state. The market is best placed to allocate these resources and, as long as consumers act rationally, that is exactly what it will do.

Words by James Childs

Cover Image Credit: Yui Mok/PA