50,000 Oasis tickets CANCELLED, Live Nation endorses resale price cap

In the latest proof that concert ticketing is broken more than 50,000 Oasis fans will have the tickets they bought to the band’s reunion gigs cancelled. 

Ticketmaster says they will begin cancelling tickets which have ‘broken the terms and conditions’ in the coming days. Their ‘examination of ticket sales is ongoing,’ and the results will be ‘passed to relevant law enforcement’.

Viagogo and StubHub

The 50,000 tickets to be cancelled are for sale on secondary sites like Viagogo and StubHub rather than the tour’s official resale partner, Twickets, where tickets can only be resold at face value.

Billboard reports that that the affected tickets were bought using prohibited technology and techniques,. They include buying more than four tickets per household per show as well as using multiple identities, VPNs and credit cards to buy tickets.

All”cancelled” tickets will then be available for sale on Ticketmaster at face value.

Live Nation and A Cap on Ticket Resales

One strategy to end to widespread ticket fraud and price gouging by resellers is to put a price cap on resales. This could cut reseller profit margins to a level that make taking the current legal and financial risks untenable.

Recently Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino embraced a cap on resales.

“We got hit by multi-billions of bots on the Oasis on-sale,” shared Rapino, adding that ticket bots are “a professional $12 billion business trying to capture all those seats. It’s an arms race with us trying to stop them, not let them in the door and let them hold the tickets.”

“We think you should be able to resell,” said Rapino, but “we would love for resale to be regulated in some sense, cap it at 20%.”

The US Department of Justice recently filed an antitrust case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

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Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a Berklee College Of Music professor.