Ticketing system 'broken' after Oasis 'chaos', executive of resale site says

2 September 2024, 18:16 | Updated: 3 September 2024, 05:34

The ticketing system for gigs, including next summer's Oasis concerts, is "broken", a senior executive at a resale site has told Sky News.

Matt Drew, who oversees business development at Viagogo, said Saturday's sale of tickets for the band's first gigs in 16 years "descended into chaos".

Thousands of fans were left angry and frustrated in their efforts to buy tickets for the concerts in the UK and Ireland next July and August.

Many entered hours-long virtual queues to buy tickets on Ticketmaster, GigsAndTours, and See Tickets, only to find prices balloon into the hundreds of pounds by the time they could buy them, with others missing out completely.

While defending Viagogo, where tickets were advertised for more than £2,000 shortly after going on sale on the "primary market", Mr Drew said: "It's a system that isn't fit for purpose."

"It's clearly broken, and bands and consumers are the ones that are losing out," he told Niall Paterson on Sky's Daily podcast.

"Asking fans in the first place to buy tickets so far in advance, you're putting fans in massive queues, which are pre-queues to other queues, having them be kicked out of these services, having the price triple on them at the point of checkout - these are scenarios that just illustrate what a mess this is.

"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.

"There's a number of very clear and common threads that would be foundational to a better system - much greater transparency, much greater levels of competition.

"These exclusive points of sales are almost unique to this industry, and it's clear that they don't work. They cause crashes, they cause the ability for people to squeeze on price to eye-watering levels."