Why we're the reason for dynamic pricing, but could Ticketmaster be more transparent about it?

I was on annual leave last week so when the news of Oasis finally reuniting for a UK tour in 2025 dropped, I was both happy and relieved. 

Happy because for many people, Oasis are their Beatles or whatever band people gravitated towards during their formative years listening to music. Relieved because I knew, after writing about the UK festival season this year, that I could still have a rest until returning to work - and then writing about Oasis.

But rather than the adulation that many had when Liam and Noel Gallagher shared details of the band’s tour and a brand new press image suggesting the pair have been more than just in talks over the phone, this week instead is the conversation about how much those ticket prices are. 

Writing about the discourse over the last two days does feel like for some - namely those who have yet to get tickets - the polish of the Gallagher’s reuniting for the anniversary of their smash hit “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory” has been dimmed because of the cost of securing a ticket through Ticketmaster. 

It comes to some surprise for many that “dynamic pricing” was used when tickets went on sale; the notion that should the market be flooded with demand for tickets, then the cost of the supply can be dictated - in this case, through Ticketmaster’s algorithms to determine what is the hot ticket and what might need its prices lowered. 

But rather than blame Ticketmaster for the price of not just Oasis tickets, but those for Sabrina Carpenter, Catfish and The Bottlemen and Taylor Swift earlier in the year, maybe we should be blaming ourselves. 

We are, after all, the market that is demanding the supply of tickets; Ticketmaster is a business, and they’ve proven before that their model does work. Why else would they offer artists the option to allow for the business model to be used? 

Our demand means they dictate the price of the supply

It would seem that FOMO, the notion of missing out on something has, led to the almost the worse case scenario for something that was initially conceived by Major League Baseball teams to help with dwindling crowd numbers. 

With the pendulum swinging towards the “cheaper ticket prices” options, we always have to prepare for it to swing back into “very expensive ticket prices” territory. But the only reason that they become expensive is because we, the consumer, are so scared of missing out on tickets that some of us are more than happy to pay incredible amounts for them. We dictate the price that we want to see said acts; Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing therefore reasses the demand and the supply and adjusts the prices accordingly.

This isn’t something that Ticketmaster enforce though, I might add; it is up to the artist themselves to determine if they want tickets set to the dynamic, real-time model or set to a fixed price, which Taylor Swift adopted for her tours.

“What about resellers though” you might ask (or comment down below). But there would be no need for scalpers if FOMO didn’t help dictate the demand for certain tickets. Why would a scalper/reseller pick up a bunch of tickets to sell on for a show when the demand isn’t there? 

“Dynamic pricing” promised to assist artists and promoters to take the sting out of a secondary resellers market, promising organisers a fair take from ticket sales. But it hasn’t really panned out that way - as tickets continue to flood places such as StubHub and the dreaded eBay ticketing purchases, including Oasis tickets already.

But to an extent, the secondary market also happens to be our fault; we set the demand, Ticketmaster and other companies set the price. Some people take advantage of lower prices, buying in bulk and gambling that the demand will still be there. Luckily for those people, there is and as we contend with how much higher prices from an official ticketing agency gets, so does our curiousity just how much we could pick one up from a secondary source.

But that’s not to say that the agency should be completely absolved from ticket pricing.

More transparency, Ticketmaster?

Where Ticketmaster could have been cordial to fans of Oasis or Sabrina Carpenter is that those shows were using “dynamic pricing” for its ticket sales before fans sat in queues, as the prices for the tickets would fluctuate at the same time. 

The pricing model is run on a real-time basis; meaning that a friend could have bought an Oasis ticket for £75 (I wish), but sitting in a digital queue thinking it’s going to cost you the same only to be met with a completely new price while others waiting suffer a similar fate could have been avoided.

Maybe making it absolutely explicit what shows have adopted “dynamic pricing” before asking customers to wait in line to pick up their tickets might tempt people to explore other ticketing avenues or look at a different date to see if the demand for those shows are different to, say, the opening night of the event. 

The frustration isn’t so much about just the ticket prices because, ultimately, if people are willing to pay a certain amount then that’s capitalism. The frustration comes from sitting in line for a ticket only to find out that at one stage a “reasonable” price suddenly became untenable to purchase. 

At least, if I was queuing up for a Foo Fighters ticket to have that happen to me, I would find the frustration in it. 

Do you agree with the opinions of our writer and think that more transparency for ticket sales might alleviate rising ticket prices? Let us know by dropping a comment down below or emailing the reporter.