Predictably, the Oasis reunion weekend saw ticket platforms overloaded as millions of fans queued up to buy tickets, putting the spotlight back on an already challenging ticket market.

Angry fans felt their beloved band had sold out in more ways than one, using a controversial “dynamic pricing” method that overshadowed the rest of the sales, including the band’s efforts to prevent rampant black market trading.

The sale is another example of how ticketing has become one of the most complex – and often unpleasant – experiences for music fans. Here’s everything that went right (and wrong) and what it all means for the future of the live music business.

1. The band tried to prevent black marketeers from exploiting their fans

With Oasis expecting unprecedented demand for their first shows in 15 years, the Gallagher brothers attempted to put in place safeguards to stop ticket brokers and black marketeers from ripping off fans with extreme markups on secondary ticket platforms. They did this by launching a face-value ticket exchange on ticketing platform Twickets, declaring it was the only way for ticket holders to resell their seats.

After advance sales began, with seats on offer for up to £6,347 (or $8,300), the band warned that their tickets “can be resold at face value ONLY through Ticketmaster and Twickets. Tickets sold in breach of terms and conditions will be cancelled by the promoters,” Oasis said.

Oasis joins the ranks of Pearl Jam, Billie Eilish and The Cure in engaging in fan-to-fan swaps and restricting the transferability of tickets. This is predictably unpopular with resale platforms, who argue that restricting transferability eliminates competition and gives primary ticket providers like Ticketmaster unrivalled control over the market.

Nevertheless, interest groups that support ticket reform have welcomed the strategy. They believe that by removing the profit motive from the secondary market, the black market can be stopped and fans can be prevented from being ripped off.

2. Black marketeers are still trying to resell tickets against the band’s will

Although Oasis has repeatedly warned that tickets sold outside of official ticket services and fan-to-fan exchanges “are either counterfeit or will be cancelled by the promoters”, that has not stopped resale platforms such as StubHub and Viagogo from adding them to their range anyway.

At the time of publication, Viagogo has hundreds of tickets for all of the band’s UK dates on sale, some for nearly $4,000. In a statement to Rolling Stone, Viagogo insisted that it was allowed to sell the tickets despite Oasis’ claims.

“Reselling is legal in the UK and fans are always protected by our guarantee – that they will receive their tickets in time for the event or get their money back,” says a Viagogo representative. With the shows still almost a year away, it remains to be seen when and how Oasis and the concert promoters will deal with the seats listed on the secondary market.

As long as they have their tickets, brokers will likely find ways to sell them. As 404 Media reported in July, some black marketeers have used hackers to circumvent non-transferable ticket software. The only way to stop price gouging is through enforceable government intervention. Ireland, for example, completely banned the resale of tickets above face value several years ago.

At the time of publishing this story, Oasis’ Dublin concert is the only one that has no tickets listed on Viagogo. Viagogo said bans like the one in Ireland “ultimately harm fans by limiting their choice.” “Banning open market resale – like in Ireland – only leads to an increase in scams,” the Viagogo representative says.

Viagogo argues that secondary ticket marketplaces are more tied to supply and demand than the main ticket provider, and in its statement advised fans to be patient and not panic buy on the day of the sale.

“Demand will peak when tickets go on sale, but this does not reflect the normal price that tickets can and will cost,” said Cris Miller, global managing director of Viagogo, in a statement. “Just this summer, tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in the UK were sold on our platform for just £80.”

3. Fans say Ticketmaster and the band are instead cheating them with demand-driven pricing

The praise for Oasis’ ticketing policy unfortunately didn’t last long. By Saturday morning, customers were once again angry, cursing Ticketmaster for using controversial dynamic pricing mechanisms that forced them to charge higher prices in the face of extremely high demand for the shows. Some seat prices rose by as much as £200, or about $261.

Fans have filed a complaint with the British advertising regulator, the BBC reported. Buyers have claimed that the ticket prices are misleading.

While much of the anger is directed at Ticketmaster, it is the artists and their teams – not the ticketing company – who set the prices. As Robert Smith wrote on X, formerly Twitter, about the dynamic pricing of The Cure’s own tour last year: “It’s a greedy scam – and all artists have the choice not to participate. If no artists participated, it would cease to exist.”

In a statement, Ticketmaster representative Ally Norton also reiterated that artists set the price, saying that platinum tickets “provide fans with guaranteed access to some of the most sought-after tickets while allowing artists and others involved in the production of live events to price tickets closer to their true market value.”

The company also pointed out that the price increases were not decided algorithmically based on demand in the waiting room, but were set in advance for select seats. “There is nothing like algorithmic price increases for concert tickets,” Norton says. “Ticket pricing is a largely manual process that involves adjusting a small portion of available inventory, usually the most in-demand seats in the house, to prices closer to the full market value that would be found in resale markets.”

To be fair, even with the higher price tag, these seats were still significantly cheaper than what is currently being offered on the secondary market, but that’s probably not much consolation to fans wondering why they had to raise prices in the first place.

The price increases vary: production costs have increased significantly, as have expenses for roadies, and yes, some artists may just want to charge what they feel is reasonable.

Oasis are not the first artists to face criticism from fans over dynamic pricing. Bruce Springsteen’s fans were outraged after the boss introduced dynamic pricing for his tour last year, with some tickets costing thousands. Springsteen defended the move in an interview with Rolling Stone, He pointed out that this practice only applies when a certain number of tickets are sold and argued that the artists should get the extra money for the tickets and not the black marketeers.

“The bottom line is that most of our tickets are absolutely affordable. They’re in that affordable range. We have these tickets that are going to be sold somewhere at that (higher) price anyway,” Springsteen said. “The ticket agent or someone else is going to take the money. I thought, ‘Hey, why not give the money to the people who are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?'”

Even Twickets has been criticised by buyers over the fees quoted for tickets on their face value exchange. A viral screenshot showed a fee of £138.74 for the sale of two tickets priced at £488, which worried fans and made them question whether the face value exchange was also extorting fans. Twickets subsequently announced a cap on its fees.

However, it will likely be a while before any significant quantities of tickets appear on Twickets’ website. Fans only bought their tickets this weekend and, as they cannot profit from the sale, they would be unlikely to offer them unless they realise they cannot attend a concert.

4. The same old technical problems plagued customers

As expected, Oasis’ online queues were a battleground this weekend, with Ticketmaster once again among the most searched terms on social media as hordes of fans reported hours-long queues and technical issues that saw them kicked off the site as they tried to secure seats.

The problems didn’t just affect Ticketmaster. Both See Tickets and UK ticketing company Gigs and Tours struggled with overwhelming demand, with fans receiving error messages when attempting to access the frozen websites.

Critics say Ticketmaster, which is facing a monopoly lawsuit from the Justice Department, has had no incentive to put more resources into innovating its technology because there aren’t many serious competitors to Ticketmaster’s business. (Ticketmaster itself has claimed it has poured billions of dollars into its technology.)

Launching a sale for an event with such high demand isn’t that easy, and it’s not just because of the high demand. With a show with as much demand as Oasis, a ticketing platform can’t simply open the sales floor to every single potential buyer at once, considering how many people could be trying to grab the same seat at the same time. To keep the queues moving, ticket sellers have to slowly funnel fans to the sales page, resulting in the bottleneck we saw this weekend.

5. British authorities will conduct further investigations

The dynamic pricing strategy in particular has caught the attention of British authorities, who have now said they are investigating the matter. Even Lucy Powell, leader of the British House of Commons, said she “spent more than I expected to pay” to get tickets to the show. the guardianadding that she was “not sure how completely transparent” the sale was.

British Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told the BBC on Monday that dynamic pricing would now be addressed in an upcoming meeting on consumer protection in the ticket market. Nandy called it “depressing to see grossly inflated prices that exclude ordinary fans,” according to the BBC.