Consumer group Which? has added to calls for Oasis fans who bought tickets for the band’s reunion tour to get refunds if they paid “over the odds” for their type of ticket
Pressure is growing for Oasis fans to be given refunds after they were left fuming by a ticket price controversy for the highly anticipated reunion tour.
Consumer group Which? has called on Ticketmaster, where the concerts were sold, to hand back the difference to gig-goers who “paid more than expected” for their tickets. It comes after the Competition and Markets Authority said last week the firm may have breached consumer protection law and “misled” fans during last summer’s tickets scramble. Ticketmaster was found to have labelled some seated tickets as “platinum” and sold them for more than double the price of equivalent standard tickets.
Yet this risked giving fans the misleading impression that platinum tickets were better, the CMA said. Nearly a million fans bagged tickets for the Gallagher brothers’ reunion tour. But fans were left raging after prices soared from £148 to £355 after going on sale.
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Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy at Which? , said: “Given that both the CMA and Which? have found serious legal concerns with the way in which Oasis tickets were sold, Ticketmaster must now do the right thing and begin the process of refunding fans who may have been misled into paying over the odds for tickets that would have been half the price just hours earlier. The CMA needs to make sure this happens, so that fans aren’t forced to go down the legal route to get their money back.”
The boss of Ticketmaster denied ripping off music fans when he appeared before MPs in February. Andrew Parsons, UK managing director, told the Business and Trade Select Committee that tickets were “fairly priced”.
He insisted prices are set in advance in conjunction with event organisers – who can include Ticketmaster owner Live Nation. Committee chair Liam Byrne MP told him: “That sounds like a conspiracy.”
Mr Parsons denied this, saying organisers made pricing decisions with stakeholders, adding: “The artist is a key decision maker in that discussion.”
It is believed Ticketmaster is facing calls to make the refunds as it was the retailer and the entity that fans had a contract with.
The development came as Which? called on the government to fix the “broken ticket industry” by stopping online touts from charging inflated prices and tightening the rules on dynamic pricing. Fans trying seats for shows by top stars such as Oasis, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have also been forced to battle misleading pricing, scammers to secure tickets, it says.
Research by Which? found four in 10 people worry about buying event tickets from resale sites.
Ticketmaster was approached for a comment.
