Working class fans ‘thrown under the bus’ over Oasis concert price surge
By Cate McCurry, PA
Mary Lou McDonald said working class Oasis fans “who got them where they are” are being “thrown under the bus” over the pricing system, which saw the cost of concert tickets surge.
Hundreds of thousands of fans who waited in online queues for tickets to the band’s two gigs at Dublin’s Croke Park were left shocked when they found that prices for standing tickets had rocketed by the time they finally got the opportunity to make a purchase.
Some were quoted at €415.50 each due to dynamic pricing.
The Sinn Féin president said that the pricing system was “crazy”.
She added: “I saw somebody put it directly to Oasis that they’re a working class group, the working class got them where they are and they’re throwing them under the bus.
“The dynamic pricing … to me, it’s crazy that permission would be given for concerts, without any notification as to the cost of tickets.
“I think it just needs to stop.
“We’ve raised this time and again. Louise O’Reilly has been very active on this question with government.
“This has happened with Oasis, but it’s happened with other concert and other acts as well.
“It’s completely unfair. You enter into a lottery, really, in terms of getting your tickets, rather than a straight transaction.
“Whether it’s Oasis or Taylor Swift, or the Wolfe Tones, or the man on the moon who’s performing, the consumer should know what the price ranges are, that they’re fixed prices, and then everybody tries to get in first and get the tickets that they want.
“But this dynamic pricing has to end. It needs to be dealt with. We’ve called for it before, and I’m very glad now, maybe they’re all Oasis fans, that they’ve actually find any woken up to the fact that this is happening.
“About 500 quid nearly for a ticket. Come on.”
The Ticketmaster website said the prices of platinum and in-demand tickets were set according to their market value and were subject to change.
When asked about this issue by the PA news agency, Ticketmaster made clear it does not set the prices.
It is understood that the prices are set by the promoters, not the artists.
While thousands got the chance to buy prized tickets to the Croke Park concerts, many thousands more never made it that far and missed out completely.
The sales window opened at 8am on Saturday – an hour earlier than for the UK gigs – and within minutes the online queue for both nights was in excess of 500,000 people.
