It’s all over – bar the shouting, gnashing of tweets and a possible Government inquiry. However, one very big question remains – why is anyone even remotely surprised at the Oasishambles that unfolded on Saturday morning?
An estimated 700,000 people had logged on to Ticketmaster to buy the 160,000 tickets for the Gallagher brothers’ Croke Park shows next August, but even veterans of the Ticketmaster wars were left in numb outrage by the Kafkaesque nightmare that awaited them.
Oasis Live ’25 UK and Ireland tickets have now SOLD OUT.
Please be aware of counterfeit and void tickets appearing on the secondary market.
Tickets can ONLY be resold, at face value, via @TicketmasterUK and @Twickets. pic.twitter.com/gWW5xDDzL8— Oasis (@oasis) August 31, 2024
Oasis fans found themselves trapped in long queues, with some reporting they were 410,000th in line, while tickets that had been on sale for a very reasonable €86.50 during the Friday night pre-sale had rocketed to €415 each – all as a result of Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” policy.
Despite legislation in Ireland and UK to stop the resale of tickets at inflated prices, it seemed that Ticketmaster, who had themselves wailed about unscrupulous touts ruining their business model, were now involved in some upselling of their own.
Some bemused onlookers were unmoved and pointed out that it was merely the full majesty of market forces and supply and demand in action. Ah, ain’t capitalism grand?!
However, it was always going to be much more than a case of definitely maybe. On Saturday, betting firms were quoting 14/1 odds of anyone securing a ticket to one of the band’s 17 comeback shows. To use one of Liam’s less gnomic expressions, the demand was “biblical” but only in that it all resembled that parable about feeding the thousands. Quite simply, there was never going to be enough fishes and loaves to go round.
Either way, Oasis had broken the internet for all the wrong reasons and fans were left furious, bewildered and even feeling betrayed. This could be the worst public relations disaster for a band since that nice U2 group dropped their new album on every iTunes account on the planet back in 2015.
The country has been seized by a very bad case of Oasis neurosis.
This morning, Ticketmaster, who were very bashful on Saturday morning, finally broke their vow of silence and issued this curt statement to Claire Byrne’s Today programme on RTÉ Radio 1: “All ticket prices, including Platinum, In Demand, and VIP, are set by the tour. Promoters and artists set ticket prices. Prices can be either fixed or market-based. Market-based tickets are labelled as ‘Platinum” or ‘In Demand’.”
So, that’s all right then.
Amid mounting fury on Monday afternoon, Ireland’s Competition and Consumer Protection Commission also issued a statement, saying, “the CCPC believes there are legitimate concerns around the consumer experiences of buying concert tickets this weekend. We are actively reviewing the situation and we will consider all options to ensure consumer protection law is followed.”
Taoiseach Simon Harris also appealed for the chuckle brothers to find “it within themselves” to put on more Irish gigs.
“I think with the level of interest in attending Oasis gigs in this country, one would hope that they might find it within themselves to put on a few more,” Mr Harris said.
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He added that monopolistic pricing in the ticketing industry should be probed after the price of tickets for the reunion gigs surged.
Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald played the working-class card and said: “I saw somebody put it directly to Oasis that they are a working-class group.
“The working class got them where they are and they’re throwing them under the bus.”
It was a similar story in the UK, where Minister for Culture Lisa Nandy said it was “depressing to see vastly inflated prices” on official sites and promised to investigate dynamic pricing as part of a review into ticket sales.
Curiously (or maybe not remotely curiously), the usually garrulous Liam and Noel have have had nothing to say on the matter so far.
The ire and venom has been overwhelmingly – and quite justifiably – directed at Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation (who, let’s not forget, also part own Dublin-based concert promotors MCD), while the actual band in question were of course mere innocents, helpless in the face of the machinations of a predatory music industry.
Grumbling and genuine fury about corporate greed and peak late-stage capitalism has so far left Noel and Liam largely untouched. Perhaps there was a feeling of “it’s all good if our kid and The Chief are coining it.” As indeed they are, with a reported payday of £50 million each for their reunion shows.
But now that fans and politicians are rumbling that acts just like Oasis (including Saint Bruce of Springsteen; Taylor Swift opted out) have been taking full and gleeful advantage of Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing since 2018, questions are being asked about why the Gallagher brothers are selling out their much-vaunted working-class roots and ripping off their loyal fans.
But why so shocked? Oasis have never made any secret of their love of mammon and were happy to wave their newfound wealth about when they made it big thirty years ago. Like pools winner Viv Nicholson (who famously appeared on the cover art of The Smiths single Barbarism Begins at Home), Noel and Liam have always liked to spend, spend, spend.
After all, back in September 1993 Oasis played to an empty room in the Duchess of York pub in Leeds after they jokingly told the venue promotor to charge £50 a ticket.
And weren’t the band’s knowing displays of ostentatious wealth all part of living the rock ‘n’ roll dream? A dream hugely at odds with certain other acts (let’s say one who has just made Croke Park their home from home over the past few nights) and their own displays of hand-wringing humility.
Working-class lads made good have always liked to live it large. Good for them. Just look at the cover of Oasis’ second album, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory – there they are, frolicking around a country house, playing at being minted Beatle boys.
Isn’t this the band who penned songs about being an actual rock `n’ roll star, champagne supernovas and reckless drug and alcohol use?
As Noel has said many times, there ain’t nobody as ambitious as the working class, knowing full well that there ain’t nobody as entreatingly vulgar as the noveau riche.
The last time I met him was in 2012 and I asked him about the reformation of The Stone Roses, the band that had more than any other inspired Oasis all those years ago.
“Money plays a big part in those things,” he said, with a sly arch of a famous eyebrow. “You have to take an interest in the business side of things when you’re in this industry.
“All the records and the videos for my solo stuff cost about two and a bit million and then you have to pay everybody on the tour so that’s a couple of million out of my kids’ inheritance . . . don’t tell them that hahahahaha.”
So, nobody should be surprised that the man who was gifted a chocolate brown Rolls Royce by his record company when he couldn’t drive and who has a hefty alimony bill to pay should make no apologies about maximising profits from gigs he seems less than enthused about playing in the first place.
As Johnny Rotten once sneered from the stage at the end of The Sex Pistols’ show at the Winterland in San Francisco in 1978, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
This Oasishambles is likely to run and run but in the end, another question remains for disappointed disciples of the brothers Gallagher – is it worth the aggravaaaaashun?