Comment: No Oasis for less affluent fans
In August 1994 I went to see Oasis play at the Forum in London’s Kentish Town at a cost of a mere £7 for a ticket that I’d bought at the Stargreen kiosk on Kingly Street near Oxford Circus. It was a painless experience all round and a memorable event.
I’d prefer to keep my memory of watching Oasis live as a pleasurable one so I’ve played no part in the current bun fight for tickets that has surrounded the recent announcement that the Gallagher brothers will be returning to the stage. This time it’s a much bigger stage, a much bigger cost, and will undoubtedly involve much bigger people as more 50-year-olds look to relive that period when they were in their slimmer twenties/thirties. I’m okay with nostalgia but it doesn’t age well.
What has also changed is that I don’t recall Sir Tony Blair being involved in 1994’s Oasis gigs although he did fancy himself as a bit of a rocker. (He had also at that stage not yet invited the Gallagher’s to number 10 – that was a little later in his premiership). But this time we do have Sir Kier Starmer getting involved. He’s been prodded into action by the level of complaints from people about the pricing of Oasis tickets.
It’s not been a case of all tickets have been priced at a fixed £7 (you wish, the estimated 14 million people who tried to buy tickets this week) because Ticketmaster, the official seller of the tickets, has implemented its ‘in-demand’ pricing initiative. This changes the prices according to the levels of demand. The idea is that such a system deters ticket touts from re-selling on at multiples of the face value. Instead the extra money goes to the artists. In this case Oasis receive the extra money and not the touts. Just because Oasis are working class does not translate into them charging working class prices. Just ask a football fan about that.
This sounds fair to me but then I was not in the market for a £150 basic level ticket and I also believe that these situations are pretty much impossible to manage because incredibly high demand for any product means that many people will be left unhappy. Whichever way the sellers seek to handle the incredible demand for their products there will be loads of people left empty-handed. That’s inescapable. If some people manage to buy tickets because they are fortunate to have more money then that’s economics and life in general I’m afraid.
From this whole debacle the one thing Starmer and the Government has alighted on is the ‘in-demand’ pricing activity that is also known as dynamic pricing. He doesn’t like the idea of it and is investigating the matter. It is such a shame that yet again dynamic pricing is being tarnished by these rare – but invariably high profile – examples of surge-style pricing. It continues to hold back retailers from embracing such mechanics.
With dynamic pricing the opportunity to more efficiently manage over-stocks and reduce waste by cutting prices through the day would be massively beneficial to retailers and the environment. Such activity clearly involves price reductions rather than increases. When speaking with specialists in dynamic pricing they inform me that 80% of prices move down and only 20% rise when retailers have used such initiatives around the world.
When research has been undertaken in the US into the sale of tickets for live music they have found that often as the performance date nears the prices of tickets in the secondary market reduces – from the peaks. There is clearly still some hope for Oasis fans without tickets to join the throng in a major stadium next year. I’m fine with my memories of the Forum thank-you.
