Given my unequivocal feelings about the Oasis reunion, I was, apparently, one of the few people in Britain who was not attempting to obtain tickets yesterday for one of their stadium gigs next year. As is usually the case these days when a much-hyped act returns for a series of mega-concerts, the wall-to-wall publicity that the concerts had attracted meant that it seemed almost obligatory for the average punter to extract their credit card, gulp, breathe a silent prayer and at least try and secure their place in Manchester, London, Dublin or any of the other venues that the Gallaghers will be gracing next year.
Had they done so, they would have experienced a remarkable day of frustration and cynical manipulation.
Despite around a million tickets being on sale, the major ticket websites – Ticketmaster, Gigs and Tours and See Tickets – all crashed under a level of demand that could easily have been anticipated but the operators seemed unable to cope with, not least because of an onslaught of opportunistic ticket-scalping bots. If those humans who were attempting to buy tickets were not being informed by grim messages that they were number 712,921 or so in an apparently never-ending queue, they then found themselves faced with an error message after patiently waiting for several hours, sending them straight to the virtual waiting room all over again in frustration and disappointment.
This, of course, reflects a wider issue with the industry and ticket sales at the moment. The Oasis gigs are undoubtedly the most hyped since Taylor Swift graced the country with her presence earlier this summer, and while the stadium audiences next year might be swapping friendship bracelets and excited shrieks of pleasure for beery singalongs and the warm rush of Nineties nostalgia, they are nevertheless attracting a similarly enthusiastic and committed fanbase.
It is therefore disheartening to find that tickets were rising in cost on the day thanks to so-called ‘dynamic pricing’. This can be set by the artist and meant that standing tickets, with a face value of £150 – nearly four times the £38 the band’s last appearance cost at Wembley Stadium in 2009 – could shoot up to over £350 on Ticketmaster, in effect punishing Oasis’s most committed fans for their enthusiasm. The alternative, if you’re not fortunate enough to have secured tickets on the first day? Grit your teeth and head to the secondary market, where – at the time of writing – two tickets start at a mere £800 apiece for limited or restricted view seats. One optimist is asking nearly £5,000 for tickets with a clear view of the stage. That’s £5,000 each, of course.
Pictures released of the Gallagher brothers standing together to promote the forthcoming gigs did not show them looking pugnacious and superior, as usual, but instead depicted the pair smiling and looking cheerful. No doubt the main reason for their good cheer is that both men know that they are on course to make a fortune out of the reunion gigs – around £50 million each, according to reports, but this can only rise thanks to the possibility of future concerts, each with their own ‘dynamic pricing’ opportunity. And then there are festivals, a no-doubt lucrative documentary, further homecoming gigs, etc, etc.
Should the Gallaghers keep their relations businesslike – it seems rash to expect anything else – they will make more money out of these gigs than they could ever have imagined possible at the height of their success in the Nineties.
And for the frustrated and disappointed legions of fans, who will today be very much looking back in anger at their inability to buy tickets to see their idols, it will be difficult not to echo the words of one high-profile thwarted purchaser, the MP Zarah Sultana, who tweeted ‘Nationalise Ticketmaster’, after waiting three fruitless hours. Perhaps there is an easier option. Nationalise Oasis instead, link the ticket costs to income and location, and force the Gallaghers to play for the next decade until everyone who wishes to see them has had an opportunity. I can’t say that it would convince me to give them a go, but at least it would give us unconverted types a laugh.