A fan uses a smart phone to access an on-line ticket sales website to purchase tickets for Oasis' "Live '25" tour. Photo: OLI SCARFF
In-demand ticket pricing might be putting Oasis fans in a huff but it is here to stay, says Chris Schulz of Consumer NZ.
Fans were fuming over the massive hiked prices they paid for Oasis concert tickets after waiting hours in an online queue, It's a "nightmare situation" for fans, Schulz told RNZ's Nights.
"You sit in these digital waiting rooms, which apparently for this show some people were in them for up to six hours.
"So, you get through the waiting room, if you're lucky, you get into the queue, and you get given a number, and that number, I saw one that said they were 148,000th in the queue"
Meanwhile for the avid Oasis fan, anxiety was building and building - and this was good for business, he said.
"While you're sitting there, you're just thinking about all these other people who are snapping up tickets that you're not going to get.
"And then if you're lucky enough to get through and there are tickets that are left, you might be faced with buying these in-demand tickets because they're more expensive, they're often the last ones to go."
While dynamic pricing was commonplace in industries such as tourism, it is a relatively new to ticket pricing, he said.
"It's really only been in the last couple of years, post-Covid, that these in-demand tickets have been happening.
"And so, people aren't used to it. I'm guessing, for a lot of people in the UK, it might have been the first ticket concert ticket they had bought in a long time."
And before finger-pointing at ticketing behemoths such as Ticketmaster, it's a decision that lies with the artist, he said.
"There are some pretty major acts who've spoken out against it. The Cure's Robert Smith called a 'greedy scam' Neil Young, as well, is up in arms about it.
"Others are more accepting of it; Bruce Springsteen uses it. Some of his tickets were going for about $5,000 through in-demand pricing."
There was nevertheless something inherently unfair about it, he said.
"I'll give you an example, for SZA earlier this year, I got a general admission ticket for $250 but the in-demand pricing for that show had those tickets at $550; same ticket, same spot in the show, same view, $300 more for that ticket.
"And the other thing that can happen too, is that if a show sells out and the artist and then announces another show, and fans have bought these in-demand tickets because they're desperate to go and they don't know there's going to be another show, suddenly there they're kind of not worth as much."
For Oasis fans it was a case of suck it up or miss out, he said.
"We don't know if they'll ever tour again. They may have another fight on stage and call it all off. This could be a once in a lifetime opportunity."
