Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing will be investigated, pledged UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy in response to protests by thousands of disappointed fans who failed to secure tickets to the Oasis reunion tour. Fans waiting in online Ticketmaster queues saw prices shoot up by as much as £200 before they were able to make a purchase. Thousands more reportedly couldn’t even access the site to buy tickets, resorting instead to ticket-resale sites in what is being described as the biggest concert debacle since Taylor Swift fans were frustrated by their attempts to use the service to purchase 2023 Eras Tour tickets.

Some Oasis fans “reportedly abandoned their purchases having spent hours trying to get through,” Variety writes, adding that “Nandy told the BBC she plans to end ‘rip-off resales’ and make sure tickets are sold ‘at fair prices,’ adding that it was ‘depressing to see vastly inflated prices excluding ordinary fans.’”

The BBC identified Labour MP Lucy Powell, a colleague of Nandy’s, among those who suffered a financial hardship as a result of the dynamic pricing that forced her to spend double the originally quoted cost of Oasis tickets.

“Anyone who has searched for a flight or an Uber ride is probably used to seeing the advertised price change before they actually come to book it,” Bloomberg reports, adding that “this phenomenon of ‘dynamic’ pricing is not widely known to apply to concert seats.”

Bloomberg says the concept, also known as surge pricing or yield management, is a modern variant on “the old rules of supply and demand — only applied in real-time thanks to technology instead of re-evaluating prices yearly or quarterly.”

In the case of Oasis tickets, the original advertised price was “around £150 ($197), but rose to £355 after a few hours as fans rushed to the ticketing websites,” per Bloomberg, suggesting that Ticketmaster was not the only offender.

But it might be the most high-profile target. Variety harkens back to a 2023 U.S. Senate hearing “on lack of competition in the concert ticket industry after demand for Taylor Swift tickets resulted in a major service failure” by Ticketmaster.

Wired reports Oasis tickets that “started at around $100 apiece” wound up on resale sites listed in the “$800 to $1,200 range, despite the fact that the band said it had put guardrails in place to prevent the cost of the tickets from getting out of hand.”

Rolling Stone notes the UK government “already had a meeting on the books to discuss ticket resale websites and their practices in the fall, Nandy said, with dynamic pricing now becoming a focal point of the talks.”

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