Oasis followers slam Ticketmaster over £350 ‘InDemand’ standing tickets

Oasis fans have hit out at Ticketmaster over its ‘disgusting’ inflated ‘In Demand’ prices reaching as high as £350ea, plus fees, amid the wait for sought-after reunion tour tickets this morning.

Some 14 million fans are expected to have joined queues on select websites to be in with a chance of securing one of around 1.4 million tickets for one of the 17 UK and Ireland shows.

Ticketmaster assures lines are still moving forward and has shared tips on avoiding issues with the website, though Oasis devotees are still reporting outages.

But others fortunate enough to be in the position of buying tickets are now sharing their horror to discover various sites offering dynamic prices for ‘in demand’ tickets, at multiples of the original price, with tickets only reserved for a limited time.

Many thousands of fans have been waiting in online queues since the early hours of this morning in the hope of securing a ticket for one of next year’s shows. Standing tickets were originally listed from £151.25, and seated from £74.25 in London.

Journalist Gavan Reilly shared in the frustration at inflated ticket prices in a post now seen more than 400,000 times.

He wrote on Twitter/X: ‘After 105 minutes in the queue: only tickets left for Oasis on Sunday are “official platinum tickets” (€490.50) and “in demand standing tickets” (€415.50). 

‘Neither has any VIP element: it’s literally just Ticketmaster incorporating tout pricing into the ‘face value’ proposition.’ 

Darragh Moriarty, City Councillor for South West and Inner City, and Labour Leader on Dublin City Council, chimed in: ‘”In demand standing ticket” is just a standard standing ticket except double the price. No difference between Ticketmaster and touts.’

Mr Moriarty shared apparent screenshots from the Ticketmaster website offering In Demand standing tickets for 415.50 euros each, plus fees – equivalent to around £350.

Once through the queue, fans have a limited time in which their tickets are reserved to decide whether or not to pay the offered price.

Ticketmaster explains: ‘In Demand Tickets are dynamically-priced tickets.

‘Based on demand the prices of these tickets may change.

‘These tickets are not part of VIP packages – they are tickets only.’

MailOnline contacted Ticketmaster for further comment. 

Ticketmaster notes that they do not have any say on the face value price of a ticket. 

‘That is decided by the event organiser. What we do have a say over is the price that is displayed to you and we always ensure that you see the total price you will need to pay right from the beginning – we never hide our fees.’

The first batch of tickets went on sale yesterday at 7pm for those lucky enough to get a pre-sale code. 

But within minutes of the sale going live, tickets were being resold for up to £10,000 by greedy touts.

Oasis soon assured on social media that tickets ‘can only be resold at face value via Ticketmaster and Twickets’.

‘Tickets appearing on other secondary ticketing sites are either counterfeit or will be cancelled by the promoters.’ 

Users have since responded to the post sharing some of the In Demand prices offered, calling on the band to ‘tell Ticketmaster as they are not selling at face value’.

Others criticised Viagogo for selling tickets at multiples of the original price.

The managing director of ticket resell website Viagogo today defended the decision to sell opportunities to see the band at beyond the price set by the organisers.

Cris Miller said: ‘This is a dream event anticipated by millions worldwide.

‘Our number-one tip for fans using secondary marketplaces is to continue to check prices outside of the first few weeks of sale.

‘Demand will be at its peak when tickets hit the on-sale but it’s not a normal reflection of what tickets can and will go for. 

‘Just this summer tickets for Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour in the UK sold on our platform for as low as £80.’

He added: ‘In the case of Oasis – a highly anticipated event – we saw the primary sites struggling to manage demand even before the on-sale, and site crashes.

‘We know fans are frustrated with the process and we know there is a better way. 

‘We continue to support industry collaboration to ensure the entire ticketing market works for fans and the live entertainment industry.

‘Resale is legal in the UK and fans are always protected by our guarantee that they will receive their tickets in time for the event or their money back.’

‘Error 503’, ‘Shambles’ and ‘Crashed’ all began trending on Twitter/X in the United Kingdom this morning as fans went online to try to bag tickets.

A MailOnline poll found nearly 90 per cent of readers had not yet been able to get tickets – slightly less than the one in seven expected to get through, per bookies.

Multiple sites selling tickets have received huge amounts of traffic as people logged on this morning around the same time to be in with a chance.

Reports of outages on Ticketmaster shot past 4,000 just after the hour, having sat at around zero through Friday into Saturday.

A spokesperson for Ticketmaster told MailOnline this morning the website had not crashed and assured: ‘The queue is moving along as fans buy tickets.

‘As anticipated, millions of fans are accessing our site so have been placed in a queue.

‘Fans are advised to hold their place in line, make sure they’re only using one tab, clear cookies, and ensure they aren’t using any VPN software on their device.’

Responding to complaints on Twitter/X, Ticketmaster advised fans on how to limit the likelihood of a crash.

‘Please make sure you are only using one tab, clear your cookies, and ensure you aren’t using any VPN software on your device,’ Ticketmaster wrote in one post.

‘Please clear your cache/cookies and ensure you aren’t using any VPN software on your device/WiFi,’ read another.

‘If this doesn’t help, please try using a different browser/device or using mobile data instead of WiFi.’

Gigs and Tours, another ticket-selling website, also flagged error messages for fans.

‘The service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later,’ a notice on the site read.

SeeTickets also ran the warning: ‘Our Website is very busy! We have lots of people trying for tickets and you are being held on this page till a space becomes available.’ 

IT experts also warn there is a ‘huge possibility’ that high numbers of Oasis tickets are being purchased by computer bots at once.

Ticket re-sellers often use automated software to buy more tickets for events than they are allowed, only to sell them on at higher prices.

Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at software security firm Eset said some groups have the right software and knowledge to manipulate ticket websites, and even use bots to ‘swoop in and purchase high numbers of tickets at once’.

He told the PA news agency: ‘Being the next series of concerts since the demand for Taylor Swift tickets, I would suggest there would be a huge possibility of bots being used to swoop in.’

Many people used social media to say that they had been suspended from the Ticketmaster website as they were assumed to be a bot.

Mr Moore said: ‘Bots mimic the activity of real users and even manipulate their location using off-the-shelf software such as a VPN.

‘This is usually counteracted using bot detection software but this can often produce false positives when real users are assumed to be bots themselves.’

Chief executive of the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers, Jonathan Brown, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that fans need to ‘open their eyes and protect themselves’.

He added: ‘It’s a dreadful combination, I suppose, you’ve got that high level of emotion, a high level of excitement about Oasis reforming, and a limited supply of tickets – and that’s going to lead to problems, it’s going to lead to people trying to scam people.’