Hands up (and lighters in the air) if you tried to buy Oasis tickets at the weekend. 

The Masterplan was of reasonably priced tickets and touts being frozen out, but, Little By Little, we saw this plan Slide Away as the reality looked more like long online queues, the system Falling Down and booting people out, and those who reached the end of the queue were faced with higher than expected prices to see these Rock ‘n’ Roll Stars.

After queuing for several hours online, many fans have complained that the tickets they were offered ended up costing substantially more than the prices that had been advertised originally. In some cases more than double or triple the price they expected to pay! That's a lot of Cigarettes and Alcohol!

After waiting several hours and Going Nowhere (feeling they'd have to Live Forever in an interminable queue), many fans were given a short window of time to decide if they were willing to Acquiesce and shell out, or hang up and simply Look Back In Anger. Some Might Say most of their fans were left Crying their Heart Out. It seems like the whole thing has been a bit of a Digsy's Dinner (ok, that one was bad, but Don't Go Away).

Ticketmaster has defended its dynamic pricing strategy, “Whatever”, they said, these practices are common in the sector. You'll just have Roll with It, they said… (ok, no they Definitely Maybe didn't say any of that).

I think I've got all the puns our of my system. Now that I've Let It Out, let's get serious for a minute.

Let's shiiiiaaiiiiin a light on the issues

Listen Up. Dynamic pricing is a pricing strategy in which businesses set flexible prices for products or services based on current market demands. The price increases and decreases are carried out by software (She's Electric!) that collects data and uses algorithms to adjust pricing according to demand (and other pre-set but often quite opaque rules). 

So is dynamic pricing legal?  In principle, yes. Businesses can effectively charge what they like and what the market will bear. 

HOWEVER, if an item is advertised at a certain price (e.g. £150) and the advert does not make clear the price could vary drastically at any given moment, then a consumer has a legitimate expectation that it will be sold at that price (not, e.g. £350).

If they wait in line for hours to buy that item, only to be told at the moment of purchase that the price has increased from what they were originally told and they can like it or lump it, then the advertiser who made the original price claim is likely to have breached the CAP Code (i.e. the advertising codes), and more importantly consumer laws. 

Those consumer laws in force at present are found in the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations, 2008 (CPUT) - soon to be replaced with the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC Act), but that changeover won't happen until 2025.

Among other things, both pieces of legislation prohibit unfair commercial practices, including misleading actions, claims or omissions. This includes making misleading claims about the price of a product or service, or leaving out important information about the price (for example, that the price is ‘dynamic’ and may change from the price initially quoted). 

It's even worse, of course, if the price has shot up very significantly when one reaches the front of a long queue, and worse still if the consumer is only given a minute or two to decide whether they accept the new, massively higher price or lose out completely at that point.

In this case, many consumers might not have joined the queue had they known that the price was going to be so high. Many fans could not afford the increased price - many are now Married with Children…. others live Half The World Away, so also have to factor in the price of accommodation in the relevant city on top of those high ticket prices.

CMA launches investigation - 5 September 2024

UPDATE - Within a few days of the debacle unfolding, the main consumer regulator, the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA), announced that it would investigate Ticketmaster for potential breaches of consumer laws. 

This is uncharacteristically quick work by the CMA!

The CMA's investigation will consider a variety of things including whether:

• Ticketmaster has engaged in unfair commercial practices which are prohibited under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008
• People were given clear and timely information to explain that the tickets could be subject to so-called ‘dynamic pricing’ with prices changing depending on demand, and how this would operate, including the price they would pay for any tickets purchased
• People were put under pressure to buy tickets within a short period of time – at a higher price than they understood they would have to pay, potentially impacting their purchasing decisions

While the practice of dynamic pricing is not automatically unlawful, this is not the first time dynamic pricing has given the CMA cause for concern and irritated fans of live sporting and music events. 

The way in which dynamic prices are promoted and administered may breach consumer protection or competition law in certain circumstances. 

The CMA will now investigate how it may have been used in this instance, and will focus on the information buyers were given regarding the price they would pay throughout the user journey (and before they started it), and what happened when they reached the check-out and were given a limited window to decide whether or not to go ahead with their purchase. 

The CMA is at the initial stage of its investigation and will now engage with Ticketmaster. It will also start gathering evidence from various other sources, which may include the band’s management and event organisers. As part of its information gathering activities in this case, the CMA is inviting fans to submit evidence of their experiences in relation to the purchase or attempted purchase of Oasis tickets. Fans are being asked to provide their evidence through CMA connect and, where possible, to include any screenshots they may have taken as they progressed through the purchasing process.

The CMA said it will also consider whether it is appropriate to investigate the conduct of anyone else in relation to the matter… so others may be in for a brow beating… but it hasn't named anyone, and it won't let this widening of its investigation hold up its core investigation into Ticketmaster itself.

While it may look like the writing is on the Wonderwall for Ticketmaster, these are early days, and the CMA emphasised that it should not be assumed that Ticketmaster has broken consumer protection law. 

Secondary tickets

Many tickets are popping up on resale sites, meaning that genuine fans are unable to buy tickets which may have been purchased by bots. 

When the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 was passing through parliament, the Lords wanted greater protections for the secondary ticketing marketing.  The Conservative government of the day refused, but the Labour government has indicated that it does intend to review the secondary ticket sales market.

So, have we heard the last of this?  No way sis.  We'll Soldier On.  But for now, I'm Outta Time. D'you Know What I Mean?