Another ticketing controversy for Oasis as ticket sales for the North American leg of their reunion tour begin, with a plea from the band over “fake tickets” flooding secondary marketplaces.
While the controversy this time around is over touting rather than dynamic pricing and isn’t - as yet - nearly as big as the band’s UK tickets controversy, the episode has quickly resulted in new calls for greater oversight and regulation of the secondary ticketing market in the US.
In particular, the country’s National Independent Venue Association has highlighted the thousands of ‘speculative tickets’ being listed by touts on resale websites before tickets had even gone on sale through official channels.
NIVA, which is also behind the Fix The Tix campaign, began tracking the speculative listing of Oasis tickets on the resale sites after the shows had been announced but before tickets were officially on sale. As a result, it has called on members of the Commerce Committee of the US Senate to prioritise proposed legislation that will curb speculative selling and prohibit “deceptive marketing” of tickets.
As of Tuesday, NIVA said, “there are at least 9000 fake tickets on sale for upcoming Oasis shows in the US. We know these tickets are fake, because not a single ticket has been sold yet for the 2025 Oasis US tour dates”.
Prompted by NIVA’s statement, Oasis themselves took to social media yesterday urging fans to “please be aware”, because “thousands of fake Oasis tickets have already been discovered on StubHub and Vivid Seats before the North America tour has even gone on sale!”
The term ‘fake ticket’ possibly implies an outright scam, where a tout has no intention of providing a ticket to a buyer. However, with speculative selling, touts usually make a sale intending to secure a ticket for the buyer via the primary sites at some point, but - of course - it can't be guaranteed that that ticket will be secured.
NIVA says that, on Tuesday, it found 2177 speculative listings for Oasis tickets on StubHub, most of them offering at least two tickets for sale. On Vivid Seats they found 1725 speculative listings, likewise usually offering multiple tickets. Hence the “conservative estimate” of 9000 speculative tickets being listed across secondary marketplaces.
“We found a significant number of listings with no warning or messages that the tickets were not in the possession of the seller, including the most expensive tickets”, NIVA adds. “Even more egregious is messaging on Vivid Seats sharing misinformation with fans that only ‘1% of tickets [are] left’ when, again, the official ticket sale has not yet begun”.
This was all set out in a letter to members of the Senate Commerce Committee. New laws have already been proposed in the Senate via the Fans First Act which would outlaw speculative selling on ticket resale sites, as well as mandating all-in pricing and prohibiting “deceptive marketing” on all ticketing platforms.
NIVA’s letter goes on, “We are sharing examples of speculative and fake tickets from the Oasis shows with Congress because these are among the highest-profile sales that get the public’s and Congress’s attention”.
“The scourge of fake tickets for these shows and so many other lower profile shows deceives consumers and may even lead them to buy flights, hotels, dinners and more that they can’t recover if they don’t receive the ticket they have purchased or if the ticket they receive does not work”.
They call on the committee to “hold a hearing on predatory practices in the live space, including the sale of speculative or fake tickets”, once Congress returns after next month’s Presidential election. “We also urge your committee to take up the Fans First Act”, it adds, “to ultimately advance comprehensive ticketing reform as part of a year-end legislative package”.
In the UK, it was the use of dynamic pricing on the Ticketmaster platform - so that prices for Oasis tickets surged with demand - that caused the controversy, resulting in an investigation by the UK Competition & Markets Authority and dynamic pricing being added to the agenda of an upcoming government consultation on ticketing.
Some people see dynamic pricing as being a tool to combat ticket touting. Indeed, Oasis themselves said as much when confirming that - following the controversy in the UK - they would not be using dynamic pricing for their North American shows.
“It is widely accepted that dynamic pricing remains a useful tool to combat ticket touting and keep prices for a significant proportion of fans lower than the market rate and thus more affordable”, the band said in a statement. However, “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”.
On the flip side, any controversy around primary ticketing - including dynamic pricing and technical problems caused by high demand - are used by supporters of secondary ticketing as a distraction tactic. They will insist that ticket resale is unfairly scrutinised and it’s the issues with primary ticketing that regulators should be investigating.
During the backlash to the sale of tickets for the Oasis UK shows, Viagogo’s Matt Drew told Sky News that the primary ticketing system “isn't fit for purpose. It’s clearly broken, and bands and consumers are the ones that are losing out”. He then added, “That’s the reason why we believe this whole system needs a full review. It needs to be looked at from top to bottom and redesigned in a way that supports consumers”.
Ticketmaster and its owner Live Nation generally see things the other way round, encouraging lawmakers and regulators to focus on secondary rather than primary ticketing, even though Ticketmaster itself still operates in the for-profit resale market in the US.
To that end, Live Nation is a supporter of the Fans First Act and will back calls for that to be the priority of Congress members if and when they again look into the ticketing business.
When the act was first proposed late last year, the live giant said, “We support the Fans First Act and welcome legislation that brings positive reform to live event ticketing. We believe it’s critical Congress acts to protect fans and artists from predatory resale practices, and have long supported a federal all-in pricing mandate, banning speculative ticketing and deceptive websites, as well as other measures”.