dynamic pricing needs sorting out

Dynamic pricing needs sorting out

The scramble to get tickets for the 2025 Oasis reunion shows has underlined the big problem with the ticketing systems in the UK. The Oasis shows are sold out, and they will be the highlight of the year for many people, but the ticket buying systems and companies need sorting out as they are exploiting people’s excitement in the worst possible way.

A lot of this is due to dynamic pricing, which is the strategy of adjusting prices in real time in response to market forces like supply and demand, cost fluctuation, competitor pricing, and consumer buying behaviour.

Unlike fixed pricing models, dynamic prices are constantly in flux, driven by complex pricing rules or machine learning algorithms that take in large data sets from historical sales and competitor price data to arrive at an appropriate price point for any number of product and customer segments.

Ticketmaster has been at the brunt of fan’s frustrations. Their ageing site is prone to crashing and was crashing all day today, leaving thousands of unhappy fans without tickets or waiting for hours for fluctuating ticket pricing.

In 2022, Ticketmaster sparked a massive backlash when it introduced the controversial concept of dynamic pricing. It was claimed to a measure to combat touting but the burden was placed back on the fans.

Of course, that’s capitalism for you, but it’s not fair on the punters, who, at the end of the day, are the most important part of the music machine. ‘Without your fans, you are nothing’, as the late Joe Strummer said, and it still rings true. The ticket is a deal between the fan and band, and we don’t have a problem with the musicians getting paid after all. They created the emotion and the melody that made the powerful bond in the first place – we have a problem, though, with the soulless corporates raking money off the top.

Everyone needs to get paid, but everyone doesn’t need to be ripped off by big companies using dynamic pricing – it needs sorting out.

We need the government to look into this, and we need to stop people from getting fleeced.