I remember back in 1997 when the Spice Girls announced their debut live tour. To get tickets, you had to send a cheque with a note about how many tickets you wanted. If you were one of the lucky ones, you received the tickets you’d requested in the post and then you kept hold of them until the show date arrived. I don’t remember it being a stressful experience at all.
In 1998 when they were still in the midst of their first tour, the band announced a series of stadium gigs but for those you had to call up on the phone. At the time I was on my way to Somerset with my family to visit my grandparents. It took an hour or so to get through on the phone (which was fine given we were stuck in a car for hours) and within minutes you had the tickets. Oh, and they cost about £25 each.
Fast forward to 2024 and prepare yourself for a scrum to get your hands on tickets to Oasis’ 2025 reunion stadium tour. First there’s the pre-sale ballot where you can register for a chance to access the pre-sale (no joy) and then there’s the dreaded on-sale, which began at 9am this morning. Sat at my laptop since just after 8am, I was happily watching the countdown until Ticketmaster crashed. Maybe See Tickets or Gigs & Tours are still working, I naively thought. Nope, both down too. Marvellous.
7 hours on from the 9am on-sale time, and I’m no closer to buying any tickets. A glance at social media throughout the day shows that I’m far from the only fan who’s had a nightmare only to get absolutely nowhere. First there was the queue to get onto Ticketmaster, which for me lasted about 6 hours. Then there was the queue to get tickets for the date you want to go to. With 525,000 people in front of me, I knew my chances were slim but still I held onto hope as the number whittled down to 0…. until the page refreshed and asked me to rejoin the queue.
Now as if that wasn’t frustrating enough, I also had to reset my password for my account twice – not because I’d forgotten it I may add, but that’s what Ticketmaster told me I had to do. I followed their rules, went back to rejoin the queue and was told my session had expired due to inactivity. Gah! How is that possible when I’ve literally been moved from one queue to another all day?
Returning to social media, I discovered that many fans who actually made it through to the ticket page found that the prices were hugely inflated. The £150 standing tickets advertised were now rebranded by Ticketmaster as ‘in-demand standing tickets’ going for £355. More than double the original stated price. Despite the band repeatedly saying tickets could only be resold through Twickets and Ticketmaster at face value, plenty of tickets have popped up on re-sale sites for £6,000 or more.
I also discovered that many fans, like me, had spent hours queuing only for Ticketmaster to let them down by kicking them out, blocking them for being a ‘suspected bot’ or delivering error messages in the place of ticket options. You’d think that Ticketmaster might have anticipated huge demand for the tour, given the millions that registered for the pre-sale. Forgive us fans for expecting a streamlined and straightforward process for getting tickets in the year 2024. The experience has done plenty to put me off ever trying to get tickets for a high-profile gig ever again.
Getting tickets to a gig is supposed to be joyful. That rush of securing great tickets at a reasonable (ish) price never gets old and the countdown to the gig is magical. Thanks to this experience though, many fans have been left with a bad taste in their mouths as Ticketmaster takes advantage by causing chaos and ramping up prices. There has to be a better way to sell tickets to shows like this, surely?
Oasis will reunite for a 2025 stadium tour. Find out more at https://oasisinet.com/.
