Oasis - The Drink, The Band, The Dynamic Pricing

Why allow a 10% mark-up and not 0%?

I have often passed on tickets for events I could no longer attend -- I could have sold some Liverpool FC tickets for £1,000+ -- and have never asked for or received more than face value (apart from sometimes accepting the unsought offer of a pint as a thank you).

I'd prefer there was always a mechanism for returning tickets for sold-out events to the point of sale for full credit, so that they can be reallocated more fairly to the next eligible buyer on the waiting list, but that is rarely how it's organised, so whoever you pass them on to independently is effectively a very lucky queue-jumper.

Dealing with Ticketmaster directly would be challenging (but not impossible) for the government, but I think they can more easily start by cracking down on touts by making reselling at a profit much harder. If you can reduce the number of touts in the ticket queue it would go a long way to resolving the other issues.

There are situations where dynamic pricing is legitimate, and legislating in such a way as to allow reasonable situations, but not the ones we don't like, would be complex. However, I think for things like concert or theatre tickets, then there can be an 'early bird' price, which should be locked in for a certain period. It should be long enough to allow everyone who knows they want to buy a ticket to have the chance to do so. I'd suggest a minimum of a week.

The galling thing about Oasis pushing up their prices is it's driven purely by greed and ego. The only risk for putting on the tour is they'll fall out before it starts. The costs will be very predictable, and it always seems a bit rich that the bigger the venue with economies of scale still mean higher ticket prices than venues with better acoustics and where you get a good view. At least when Take That did the Circus tour they put the money into a great big mechanical elephant, and a very large cast of supporting performers and musicians. I suspect the closest Oasis get to a costume change is to switch guitars.

So I get an email in the early hours saying they have recognised me as a ‘proper’ fan, inviting me to complete even more online forms, wait another 4 hours for a response to then be told they will let me know by next Friday if I can have a look at what is on offer. I’m rapidly losing interest in these shows and do not want and the armada of ‘amusing’ memes that have been bunged my way.

I am going to be pedantic and point out that the elephant was actually a puppet worked by dancers (a lady called Bryony was the tail). It was the Progress tour where they had a huge mechanical man - which broke down constantly!

I agree entirely that it feels very different to pay top dollar for an evening out when you can see the money has been spent on the show and that a whole load of other performers and craftspeople have been employed by it.

At least to us theatre-types, anyway.

(Take That’s current tour is not nearly so spectacular, by the way, so the budget must have been cut considerably. I paid £132 to see them at the O2 this year so Oasis’ starting price was actually pretty average.)

I am sure hard-core Oasis fans are perfectly happy to see the brothers together on stage wearing parkas and bucket hats.

Ballot entered so fingers crossed. Id imagine the on-sale might be this weekend if the notification emails will go out by Friday.

I hope it’s Saturday cos I entered another ballot to see Jack White in Islington on Friday and I’d hate to miss out on the event of our lifetimes because I didn’t spend the whole day looking for another massive online queue to jump into.

Part of the problem is that the ticket agencies use touts as the excuse to engage in their own dodgy practices, or to hike up tickets well beyond a healthy profit after costs. They claim that if they don't charge silly money then all that happens is the touts make a bigger profit, and less goes to the theatre. Without touts then they are forced to be more honest about their motives.

I have no objection to producers making a healthy profit, especially when it isn't always guaranteed, but there's profit and profiteering, and we're seeing a bit too much of the latter for my liking.

It's not at all the same thing as offering cheaper flights to those comfortable flying on Friday 13th, or mid-week.

Failed to get a ballot entry. Oh well.

12 million? I can’t believe it. Where’s that from?

And it kinda doesn’t matter, because with 1.4 million tickets on sale dividing the estimated 12 million by 8 still leads to more people than tickets available.

The hype will still work as long as demand outstrips supply.

And by the look of it, most of those tickets are up for resale on Twitter!

They’ve announced shows in North America and Mexico in August and September next year , inviting people to sign up for another ballot: they can stick their ballots up their holes, the size of the venues seems more than a bit optimistic for a band that never took off properly over there.