mxdwn.co.uk » Ticket Scalpers

Oasis Tickets Refunded After Customers Mistakenly Identified As Bots

Lewis Pinto — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 01:29:20 +0000

Oasis fans have been left frustrated after Ticketmaster refunded their tickets for the band’s 2025 reunion tour, mistakenly identifying real customers as bots. Social media was flooded with disgruntled posts as people either tried to contact customer support, or warned other fans to keep an eye on their inbox. This has put Ticketmaster back in the spotlight after a summer dogged by debates around their ticketing policies.

A spokesperson for Ticketmaster has addressed the issue, saying: “Anyone who has been contacted and believes a refund was made in error has been sent a form to fill in for the tour’s promoters to review.” However, fans going through the form to appeal their refund and get their tickets back encountered issues with error messages, leaving them to contact customer support again.

If 2025 could actually get any worse – now I don’t even have this to look forward to any more
Denying legit fans their tickets??

@oasis @liamgallagher @NoelGallagher @BBCBreaking @NME @Ticketmaster @ticketmasteuk @TMFanSupport pic.twitter.com/UROctkNZ4S

— Jen (@lostinmusic72) February 7, 2025

X user, ‘@lostinmusic72’, posted a screenshot of the email from Ticketmaster, informing them of the decision to refund the ticket. The ticketing platform claimed that the refund had been requested by the band’s tour promoter, and that they had violated the conditions under which the tickets were purchased. The same X user had gone through the presale process, which required customers to correctly answer a question about the first Oasis drummer and should have further proven that they were not a bot.

Not sure what DM has achieved though… I’d already filled a form in. For someone to review what I already know, which is that I’m a human who brought two tickets. No proper explanation of the process, no ability to speak to a human (Ironic really!) — Matthew Ewers (@MatthewEwers) February 7, 2025

The 2025 tour is being promoted by SJM concerts and Live Nation, with the latter also being the owner of Ticketmaster. Prices for the shows started at around £150, but due to dynamic pricing, some fans were being charged upwards of £350 for the same tickets. The public backlash has led to calls for further transparency in ticket pricing, with the original price and dynamic price being displayed side by side, as well as the government planning a consultation for autumn.

Oasis issued a statement on the issue, saying: “”When unprecedented ticket demand is combined with technology that cannot cope with that demand, it becomes less effective and can lead to an unacceptable experience for fans.” The band would later confirm that the same pricing model wouldn’t be applied to the North American leg of the tour, as well as distancing themselves from the decision. “It needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and pricing entirely to their promoters and management.” The band also changed the ticketing policy for their subsequently announced Wembley shows, opting for a staggered approach instead.

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A post shared by Oasis (@oasis)

Despite the backlash and Ticketmaster’s central role, some online defend the platform, arguing that it only provides the feature as an option rather than enforcing it. A report by The Sun found that dynamic pricing adjusts costs based on demand, creating an uncertainty in the customer. Sir Chris Bryant, Minister for Creative Industries, said that uncertainty pressures fans into panic-buying, fearful of missing out.

The panic spread across to Reddit too, with the subreddit r/Oasis being flooded with anxious fans checking their emails, hoping not to receive an email with a refund confirmation. The subreddit also saw criticism aimed at Ticketmaster for acting so late, suggesting that anybody using bots would have bought the tickets and sold them on by now, with real fans being the ones missing out.

Comment byu/secret-lyrics from discussion inoasis

Oasis, their management, or their promoters have yet to comment on the issue. Fans who until this week thought they would be attending this once-in-a-lifetime experience, were falsely accused of being ‘bots’ and forced to request a reissue of their ticket through an error-prone online form. With a summer of shows and festivals around the corner, the government’s autumn consultation may not come soon enough.

EU Parliament Votes in Favour of New Legislation Banning the use of Bots in Ticket Purchasing

Caitlyn Hart — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 09:51:30 +0000

The European Parliament have voted in favour of new legislation that will put an end to the use of bots in ticket purchasing. MEPs voted, on Friday, in favour of legislation to outlaw the use of special software to circumvent ticket purchasing.

This action signals the first time the EU has directly addressed the issue of ticket touting and is set to strengthen existing regulation through the inclusion of maximum buying limits, regulation obliging resellers to declare if they are a professional seller and the provision of a minimum standard by which all members must abide.

The promising move comes as the fight against the use of bots in ticket purchasing and ticket scalpers, who work outside events, showing up with unsold tickets from brokers’ offices on a consignment basis or showing up without tickets and buying extra tickets from fans at or below face value on the basis of reselling them at a profit. The move is the EU’s first ever action against the bot and scalping epidemic – a widespread issue that many big names have had to speak out on.

Ticket touting has been a colossal issue in the UK, with artists like Adele, Ed Sheeran, U2, and Radiohead selling out concerts in minutes, with them reappearing online for extortionate prices, forcing the artists to speak out.

MEP, member of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group and rapporteur of the revised Unfair Commercial Practices Directive – in which the new legislation is captured, Daniel Dalton MEP, said: “Everyone apart from touts lose out from bot bulk buying of tickets, real fans either are unable to see their favourite team or artist or forced to pay many times the face value price, whilst event organisers are seeing their purchasing limits flagrantly violated. So this first ever ban at a European level is an important first step, with the possibility to go further in future depending on how the ban works in practice.”

Once the legislation has been officially adopted by the European Council, which is likely to be in June , this year, Member States will be given a period of two years to transpose the amendments into national law. The Face-value European Alliance for Ticketing (FEAT) – on behalf of promoters, managers, trade bodies, grassroots consumer action groups and anti-ticket touting organisations – raised awareness of this issue on EU level by proposing test and coordinating lobbying for this legislation’s inclusion.

Speaking about the meaningful vote, Sam Shemtob and Katie O’Leary of FEAT, said: “We welcome the move to curb the use of bots in this first Europe-wide anti-touting law. As well as requiring professional sellers to identify themselves, it also enables member states to go further and potentially regulate the resale price of tickets.

“Most importantly, this represents the first step in harmonising regulation across Europe. This approach is critical as we know secondary ticketing companies like to exploit regulatory gaps. There is still much to be done and we will be campaigning for tougher legislation in the next parliamentary term.”

Bots enable scalpers to make multiple ticket purchases, pushing real consumers to the back of the queue. These tickets are then resold at ridiculously inflated prices on secondary ticketing platforms. A 2019 study of bot activity estimated that 42.2% of activity on primary ticketing platforms is attributable to bots compared to 56.9% human activity. The issue is only likely to worsen as technology improves: the number of sophisticated bots detected was 12.3% higher in 2019 than 2018.

This is the first time that the world’s largest trading bloc has set a common standard for ticket resale in cultural and sports events. Dealing with scalping, as secondary ticketing companies often exploit the gaps between different countries’ legislation, a harmonised approach will be critical. The new legislation has been welcomed by MP’s who have hailed it as a positive step that, “harmonises Europe with existing UK law”.

Speaking about the new legislation, MP for Washington and Sunderland West and Chair of the APPG on Ticket Abuse, Sharon Hodgson, said: “It is welcome that the EU Parliament have today voted to ban bots, which harvest tickets from the primary market in order to sell for high profits on the secondary market. This new regulation harmonises Europe with existing UK law on bots, and also allows member states to strengthen existing legislation, which will protect consumers. Fans across the world must not be priced out by the secondary ticket market using parasitical methods to get tickets.”