Oasis fans seeking tickets for the band’s reunion tour have been facing technical issues and long online waits that often ended in disappointment.
Demand to see the Gallagher brothers was incredibly high, so much so that fans accessing ticket-selling websites including Ticketmaster, reported issues including error messages, or being deemed to be bots and kicked off before they could purchase tickets.
To combat scalpers seeking to resell tickets at vastly inflated prices, the band said tickets “sold in breach of the terms and conditions will be cancelled by the promoters”.
A limited number of people were able to secure the coveted tickets through a presale ballot on Friday evening. Those who successfully battled through the competitive ballots and last-minute website issues said they were looking forward to the “special” gigs after nabbing the sought-after tickets.
Joseph Martin, 29, and his fiance Molly Abbott, 26, faced a “rollercoaster of emotions” on Saturday morning in an attempt to secure a pair of tickets. Abbott, who was on holiday in Greece, joined an online queue at 8am. After about two hours, the unthinkable happened. “She got to the front of the queue and then the site crashed and she got kicked out,” he said. “She called me in tears and said ‘Oh my god, I’m never going to listen Oasis again’. I was gutted.”
Moments later, he received a text from Abbot that said: “‘Oh, my god, I tried it again, and I’m at the checkout for two tickets’”.
The pair will travel from Brighton to the band’s home turf, Manchester. “It’s going to be insane,” said Martin.
The pair paid £350 for a one-night stay at a Premier Inn in the city, roughly the same cost as their tickets. The couple consider Oasis their “all-time favourite” act – Abbott even has a Don’t Look Back in Anger tattoo – and had considered paying above the odds if they were unsuccessful on Saturday morning.
“We discussed the possibility of not having a holiday next year and instead going to see Oasis, but some of the resale prices I was seeing probably would have ruled us out. I’d have been willing to spend £800, but when people are talking about multiple thousands of pounds, I couldn’t do that,” said Martin.
Pete Cross, 50, said he was looking forward to a summer “full of enthusiasm and joy” after bagging tickets to see the band next year with his family in the presale on Friday.
He said his entire family, including his wife, 21-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son, put themselves on a ballot to receive a presale code but he was the only who was lucky enough to get one.
“My kids are as obsessed as I am about music – Oasis underpins it all. When my daughter was five she would take a Definitely Maybe CD [into her room] to play quietly while she went to sleep,” said Cross.
Some “loyal” Oasis fans received a separate email with a guaranteed presale code. He said he was “naffed off” not to have received one of these emails, considering he had spent about £200 on two versions of Definitely Maybe on vinyl, a CD tape bundle and a T-shirt in recent months. “A mate of mine got a loyal customer presale code for seemingly signing up to the Oasis mailing list,” he said.
Nevertheless, he is delighted to have secured four tickets to see the band at Wembley in London. “The relief was massive as the screen changed. We were going to see Oasis as a family. Quick hugs. A lovely moment,” he said.
For Cross, next summer cannot come fast enough. “It’s going to be so full of enthusiasm and joy. Oasis are back.”
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Official prices for a ticket ranged from £73 for a standing ticket to £506.25 for access to a pre-show party, exhibition and seated package at Wembley.
However, by Saturday afternoon, floor-standing tickets were being resold from about £720 to £4,500 on StubHub, while seats in some lower-level sections were on offer at £9,037.
On Ticketmaster, some fans were faced with sums far above the original asking price after the site deployed dynamic pricing. These tickets were labelled “in demand” and were priced at double in some cases. Social media users reported seeing standard tickets that should be priced at £148.50 each being relabelled as “in demand standing tickets” with a price tag of £355.20 each.
A Ticketmaster spokesperson said the company does not set prices itself, pointing out a page on its website that said: “Promoters and artists set ticket prices. Prices can be either fixed or market-based. Market-based tickets are labelled as ‘Platinum’ or ‘In Demand’.”
The UK Music chief executive, Tom Kiehl, called inflated ticket prices of “great concern” on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Obviously, it’s a natural tendency, if you can’t get tickets, to find alternative sources but I very much urge music fans today, if they don’t get tickets, not to take that route.”
The concerts will take place in July and August, in Cardiff, London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin.
The dates for Oasis’s 2025 UK and Ireland tour are: 4, 5 July, Principality stadium, Cardiff; 11, 12, 19 and 20 July, Heaton Park, Manchester; 25, 26 July, 2, 3 August, Wembley; 8, 9 August, Murrayfield, Edinburgh; and 16, 17 August, Croke Park, Dublin.
The concerts come 16 years after the band split acrimoniously when Noel Gallagher quit before a show at a French festival, and 30 years since the release of their second album, 1995’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?.