Oasis bringing its 2025 tour to Australia is not beyond the realms of possibility, with the band confirming last week plans are under way for concerts outside Europe next year.
And if the Western Australian government successfully woos promoter Live Nation with another $8m sweetener, as it did to bring two Coldplay concerts to Perth last year, another phenomenon is expected to hit Australian shores: dynamic pricing.
The UK media has been awash with stories of Oasis fans queueing for hours to buy tickets for the Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin concerts, only to find when they made it to the front, the price of a £135 ticket (standing only) had risen to £355 while they were in line.
Dynamic pricing has been operating for some time in the US with Live Nation leveraging its behemoth Ticketmaster arm to raise ticket prices in real time as momentum for demand builds.
It is a relatively new experience for Britons in the realm of concert ticket buying, although the practice, also known as surge or fluid pricing, has been a longstanding fixture in the airline ticket and rideshare markets in the UK and Australia.
Less than 24 hours after the Oasis concerts sold out, the Starmer government announced it would include dynamic pricing in a review of ticketing practices.
On Wednesday, the European Commission confirmed it was looking into dynamic pricing for concerts, including a potential ban.
The next day the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority announced it would investigate Ticketmaster’s handling of sales for the Oasis gigs, including how dynamic pricing may have been used to adjust the price.
The way consumer law stands, in the UK and Australia, there is nothing illegal per se about dynamic pricing, as long as ticketing companies do not mislead consumers and make all charges fair and transparent.
Whether Ticketmaster made it clear to consumers a changeable pricing model was in operation, meaning the advertised price of a concert ticket could rise at any time subject to demand, will be investigated.
It is not yet clear whether Ticketmaster included such a declaration in the fine print of its terms and conditions when it launched the Oasis ticket sale. This would have given fans the option of not queueing if they thought it was likely the price would have increased substantially by the time they reached the front.
Some screenshots shared on social media depicted a Ticketmaster statement saying “the Event Organiser has priced these tickets according to their market value,” adding availability and pricing of in-demand standing tickets were “subject to change.”
As a horde of Oasis fans were queueing online, the Cook government in WA was not ruling out the possibility of another multimillion-dollar incentive to bring the band down under.
“Oasis is an iconic act and their reunion has created a huge amount of buzz around the world,” a government spokesperson told Perth’s Sunday Times.
“The Cook Government is always on the lookout for exclusive blockbuster events that attract visitors to Western Australia.”
In February, when Live Nation announced a 36% increase in annual revenues to $22.7bn, its chief executive, Michael Rapino, said the multinational entertainment conglomerate planned to roll out dynamic pricing around the world.
Unfair pricing not illegal
Under Australian consumer law, there is nothing illegal about a trader raising the price of a good or service according to supply and demand.
Neither price gouging nor a sudden increase in price are illegal, as long as consumers are not misled about what they’ll be charged or why.
Businesses can generally set, raise, and lower the prices they charge for the products and services they supply, an Australian Competition & Consumer Commission spokesperson told the Guardian, as long as they are clear about the price consumers will pay.
“Whether or not a business’ use of dynamic pricing may be misleading will depend on the circumstances involved in each case, including what representations a business may have made to consumers about their pricing,” the spokesperson said.
There is nothing to stop Live Nation introducing dynamic pricing to Australia, the former ACCC chairman Allan Fels says , as long as ticket buyers are made aware the practice is in operation. That could be something as subtle as a “subject to demand” caveat attached to the advertised price of a concert ticket.
“As long as it’s not misleading or deceptive, it’s legal,” Fels says.
“There are basically no laws against unfair pricing. All the things you might dredge up, if you’re a desperate lawyer, won’t hang – it’s not quite unconscionable conduct legally. There’s no doubt the public regard this sort of thing as unfair … but there’s never been a law against it.”
Live Nation has not responded to the Guardian’s request for comment.
The company’s previous responses to allegations of price gouging have been that the final decision on ticket pricing rests with the artist and their management.
Not quite, says Brian Chladil, the co-founder, director and chief executive of independent ticketing company Oztix.
“In that food chain there’s also the promoter, the booking agent, there’s the ticket company, and then there’s the venue,” he says.
And in an increasing number of scenarios, both in Australia and overseas, the artist management, booking agent, ticket company and venue are all controlled by the one entity.
The ticketing company handling the Oasis concerts, Ticketmaster, is owned by Live Nation, which touts itself as a global entity that “produces more concerts, sells more tickets, and connects more brands to music than anyone else in the world”.
In the US, it is estimated Live Nation concerts and events account for 32.2% of the country’s total industry revenue. Its Ticketmaster arm is believed to hold a 70% share of the entertainment ticket market.
There is now a civil antitrust lawsuit in the US seeking to split Live Nation and Ticketmaster, arguing the merger which happened a decade ago has led to “unlawful, anticompetitive conduct” through the exercise of monopolistic control over the live events industry.
Chladil says a typical contract for a concert tour by an international artist sees the band and the promoter split the profits from the agreed net price of each ticket on a 90/10 percentage.
“It’s clearly in the promoter’s interest to charge more, because it’s all just clear profit,” he says.
“Then on top of that the ticketing company gets paid a fee, so the higher the net ticket price the artist and promoter set, the more the ticketing company makes. And that’s from all the various made up charges – the booking fee, handling fee, transaction fee, facility fee, printed at home fee, whatever you want to call it.”
The common assumption that all revenue earned by the additional fees on tickets is retained by the ticket company is a misnomer, Chladil says.
“It actually gets split between the venue, the promoter, and the ticket company. So basically, the venue and the promoter incentivise the ticket company to charge more.”
Dynamic pricing complicates an already complex price setting machine. And fans may be unable to pressure their favourite artists into reining in their performance fees. Since the advent of streaming, and the drying up of album sales, musicians have been forced to rely almost solely on live touring to make money.
As ticketing and security expert Reg Walker told the Guardian in the wake of the Oasis chaos: “It’s in Ticketmaster’s interests to push this model. I’m not convinced that artists know what they’re getting into.”
Artists are nevertheless being urged to take a stand against “extortionate” dynamic pricing for concerts, something Neil Young and British band The Cure ventured to do last year.
“Dynamic pricing is evil because it preys on the fact that when you buy a ticket, it’s an emotional purchase,” Chladil says.
“It’s not like buying your groceries, you’re buying because you’ve got a deep connection with the artist, and they know you are pretty much willing to pay anything. They prey on that.”
Having said that, it is unlikely any government will find a way around making the practice illegal, he says.
“You can’t create a law that says you’re not allowed to make money. You can’t legislate against capitalism.”
