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The UK competition authority has called for “more protections” for consumers after tickets for the Oasis reunion tour rocketed in price on the Ticketmaster website.
Downing Street confirmed on Monday that ministers would look at the issue of dynamic pricing — where tickets are sold at higher prices if there is more demand — as part of a wider consultation on ticket sales that would include ticket touting.
Tickets for the first Oasis gigs in the UK and Ireland in 16 years went on sale on Saturday morning on Ticketmaster, the world’s biggest seller of music and sporting tickets, with many fans of the Manchester band placed in online queues for hours only to find seats priced hundreds of pounds higher than initially stated.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the government was planning a consultation on ticket resales and “will also be looking at issues around transparency and use of pricing technology”.
“The government’s job is to make sure the regulations are in place to make sure consumers are protected,” said Number 10, while adding that ticket sale strategies were up to artists and ticketing sites.
In response to news of the consultation, the Competition and Markets Authority said “more protections are needed for consumers here, so it is positive that the government wants to address this. We now look forward to working with them to get the best outcomes for fans and fair-playing businesses”.
Consumer protection law does not ban dynamic pricing, which is widely used in several industries. However, businesses are not allowed to mislead consumers about the price they pay for a product, with the law saying that vendors should not provide false or deceptive information, leave out important information or provide it too late.
Fans have urged regulators to take action. The Advertising Standards Authority said on Monday it had received 450 complaints about TicketMaster’s advertisement about Oasis live tickets.
Consumers who filed complaints said the adverts “made misleading claims about availability and pricing”, the UK’s advertising watchdog said, adding that it was “carefully assessing” such complaints. It is not investigating these adverts, it added.
Change.org said at least 16 petitions demanding action from parliament had been launched on its platform in the past 48 hours.
“I think it’s disgusting how Ticketmaster and social big corporations are allowed to gouge the prices of the tickets,” said one signatory to a petition entitled “Ban Ticketmaster ‘in-demand pricing’”, which has collected more than 7,300 signatories so far. Another wrote that TicketMaster’s surge pricing was “just legal ticket touting and should be illegal”.
Ticketmaster-owner Live Nation has been one of the biggest users of surge pricing to boost revenues, from which Ticketmaster takes a cut.
The US Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster in May for “monopolisation and other unlawful conduct that thwarts competition in markets across the live entertainment industry”.
Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy of consumer rights group Which?, urged the UK’s CMA to “clarify whether . . . this kind of dynamic pricing approach for concert tickets is legal under current rules”.
“It seems unfair that Oasis fans got up early and battled through the queues only to find that ticket prices had increased dramatically — especially when the high level of demand for the concerts was clear from the outset,” she said.
Ticketmaster has sought to defend the practice of dynamic pricing by claiming it makes it less easy for ticket touts to make money, although some artists said that there are better ways to tackle secondary ticket sales such as through better identification procedures.
Ticketmaster did not respond to requests for comment.
In an earnings call this year, Live Nation said it was expanding dynamic pricing around the world.
“We’re just rolling this out around the world,” said Michael Rapino, chief executive. “So that’s the great growth opportunity. We’ve had it in Europe but still in infancy stages. We’re going to expand it down to South America, Australia.”
He added: “Promoters are anxious for it. Artists are anxious for it, because they see, when they sell an arena in Baltimore versus Milan right now, they look at the grosses and say: ‘Wow, we’re leaving too much on the table for the scalpers. Let’s price this better.’”