Tickets for Oasis, the biggest rock band to come out of Britain in the last 30 years, go on pre-sale Friday afternoon in the UK and Ireland, ahead of a general sale Saturday that will likely be met with heavy demand.
The Oasis Live ’25 Tour begins next summer on July 4 in Wales, with the band playing nearly 20 dates across the UK and Ireland. It’s an eagerly awaited reunion between brothers and Oasis frontmen Noel and Liam Gallagher, who broke up in 2009 and have had a fraught relationship. It’s a big task for the embattled distribution giant Ticketmaster to serve fans one of the “hottest tickets of the decade.”
The pre-sale will go live for applicants who received an email confirming they will have access. However, “success in the ballot will not guarantee tickets,” Oasis cautioned on its Instagram, adding that tickets “will be allocated on a first come first served basis.”
Ahead of Saturday morning’s general sale on Ticketmaster, the Oasis website told fans “to sign up to the official ticket agents ahead of time as the websites will be very busy during the official on sale.” Tickets will also be sold on a first-come, first-served basis, and only four tickets will be available to buy per transaction.
Big concert tickets, especially ones that are sold on Ticketmaster, can trigger angst and anxiety in fans, especially after the great Taylor Swift debacle in 2022.
Ticketmaster’s site became overloaded when fans tried to purchase pre-sale tickets, and demand was so high that Ticketmaster ultimately canceled the public sale of the shows. Swift was furious, calling the debacle “excruciating for me.”
In the US, the fiasco prompted a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2023, designed to examine the lack of competition in the ticketing industry. The hearing gave members of the committee and others a chance to call out Ticketmaster’s power over the industry.
Earlier this year, the US issued a groundbreaking antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation’s grip on selling event tickets. The long-expected suit included 30 state and district attorneys general, challenging the country’s biggest ticketing website and concert promoter, which regulators allege masterminded a plan to stifle competition. Live Nation called the DOJ’s allegations “baseless” in a previous statement.
However, the lawsuit will take years to make its way through the court system. The prosecutors are seeking a jury trial and a breakup of the company.
For Beyoncé’s tour last year, Ticketmaster did roll out changes to its service, and the process went more smoothly.
Source: edition.cnn.com
