ShareFans of UK rockers Oasis may have been tricked into buying “platinum” seats that offered no additional advantage during the much-criticized ticket sale for their upcoming reunion gigs, Britain’s competition watchdog said. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into agent Ticketmaster following widespread public anger over the exorbitant cost of some tickets to see the Britpop band’s tour this year.
Fans trying to buy tickets on official sites said prices skyrocketed during the sale, while some tickets went for thousands of pounds on unofficial resale sites. The CMA issued an update Tuesday on its probe into Ticketmaster, which sold more than 900,000 tickets for the gigs. It is concerned that the agent may have breached consumer protection law by selling “platinum” seats at a high price “without sufficiently explaining that they did not offer additional benefits and were often located in the same area of the stadium” as equivalent standard tickets. Ticketmaster also did not tell consumers that there were two categories of standing tickets at different prices, with the more expensive ones released when the cheaper ones had sold out.
This resulted in “many fans waiting in a lengthy queue without understanding what they would be paying and then having to decide whether to pay a higher price than they expected,” it added. “We’re concerned that Oasis fans didn’t get the information they needed or may have been misled into buying tickets they thought were better than they were,” said Hayley Fletcher, the CMA’s Interim Senior Director of Consumer Protection.
“We now expect Ticketmaster to work with us to address these concerns so, in future, fans can make well-informed decisions when buying tickets,” she added. The chaotic scramble for the prized tickets followed the announcement in August that brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher had ended their infamous 15-year feud and were reuniting for a worldwide tour. — AFP
