Ticketmaster Agrees to Pricing Transparency in U.K. After Oasis Investigation by Competition and Markets Authority

Oasis, photo by Simon Emmett Oasis

Ticketmaster will provide new pricing transparency in the U.K. market, following the fallout from Oasis’ Live ‘25 tour on-sale. While an investigation by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority determined that the company did not employ dynamic pricing or violate consumer protection laws in the hectic ticket launch, the regulatory agency holds that the tiered pricing system may have misled fans with unclear costs and benefits. Ticketmaster has agreed to improve access to information throughout the purchasing process.

Changes in Ticketmaster’s policy address some of the most notable customer complaints issued during Oasis’ tour release, clarifying the cause of higher ticket prices than those initially advertised. The ticketing agent will now disclose whether tiered pricing will be in effect for an event’s ticket launch, providing 24 hours’ advance notice, and offer detailed pricing and ticket-type information during the purchase queue.

This change seeks to prevent fans “waiting in a lengthy queue without understanding what they would be paying and then having to decide whether to pay a higher price than they expected,” the CMA said earlier this year, as well as respond to grievances about the “Platinum” tickets, which many mistakenly believed would include additional benefits after paying more than double the standard price.

“Fans who spend their hard-earned money to see artists they love deserve to see clear, accurate information, upfront,” said CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell, per the BBC. “If Ticketmaster fails to deliver on these changes, we won’t hesitate to take further action.”

The CMA’s investigation was spurred by backlash after the first release of Oasis’ Live ‘25 tour in the U.K. and Ireland, which saw more than 10 million fans queued for one million tickets, many of whom left frustrated and suspicious that they may have faced Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing rollout in European markets. As the organization looked into “how so-called ‘dynamic pricing’ may have been used,” representatives for Ticketmaster stated that prices had been set by artists and promoters, and that the company “did not change prices during this sale — prices were established before the sale began.”

Nonetheless, Oasis’ management affirmed that its North American ticket sales would not feature algorithmic surge pricing to “hopefully avoid a repeat of the issues fans in the UK and Ireland experienced recently.”

Ticketmaster’s agreement with the CMA stipulates that the company must regularly report to the consumer watchdog over the next two years to confirm compliance. In March, Ticketmaster shared with the CMA that it had made changes in response to the investigation, per the BBC, though the organization did not “consider these changes… sufficient to address its concerns.”

“We welcome the CMA’s confirmation there was no dynamic pricing, no unfair practices and that we did not breach consumer law,” a spokesperson for Ticketmaster said on Thursday. “To further improve the customer experience, we’ve voluntarily committed to clearer communication about ticket prices in queues. This builds on our capped resale, strong bot protection, and clear pricing displays – and we encourage the CMA to hold the entire industry to these same standards.”

Ticketmaster’s agreement with the CMA arrives one week after the Federal Trade Commission and seven U.S. states filed suit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster, alleging collaboration with ticket brokers. In the complaint, the FTC argues that despite claims to limit the quantity of ticket purchases, Live Nation allowed brokers to exceed stated maximums by creating multiple accounts, then facilitated the movement of illicitly procured tickets to the secondary market through the Live Nation-owned TradeDesk platform.

In internal communications obtained by the FTC, a Ticketmaster executive is said to have admitted in an email to Live Nation leadership that the companies “turn a blind eye as a matter of policy.” Another email concerns the companies’ resistance to adopting preventive technologies like third-party identification, which an employee wrote was “too effective.”

Read more about the FTC’s suit here. Check out a recap from Oasis’ Live ‘25 tour opener here.