Ticketmaster Broke Consumer Protection Law

Oasis’ long-awaited reunion tour has attracted a considerable amount of attention. But fans of the “Bring It On Down” musicians are not the only ones with complaints about how quickly tickets sold out.

Today (March 25), the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) released an update on its investigation into Ticketmaster following “widespread complaints about the sale of Oasis’ concert tickets.”

In the report (viewable here), CMA expressed concerns that Ticketmaster might have breached consumer protection law on more than one account.

The CMA accused Ticketmaster of mislabeling a batch of seated tickets to upsell them for “near 2.5 times the price of equivalent standard tickets.” The organization notes that customers were not offered any additional benefits for the higher priced tickets.

Also, CMA claimed Ticketmaster did not inform consumers of the two categories of standing tickets at different prices. According to the CMA, Ticketmaster released the cheaper standing tickets first leaving fans who were “waiting in a lengthy queue” blind sided when they could only access the more costly option.

This isn’t a case of Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model at work. CMA says Ticketmaster deliberately “released a number of standing tickets at a lower price and, once they had sold out, then released the remaining standing tickets at a much higher price.”

Hayley Fletcher, the Interim Senior Director of Consumer Protection, addressed the matter in a public statement. “We’re concerned that Oasis fans didn’t get the information they needed or may have been misled into buying tickets they thought were better than they were,” she said. ” We now expect Ticketmaster to work with us to address these concerns so, in the future, fans can make well-informed decisions when buying tickets.”

The CMA has contacted Ticketmaster in hopes of pressuring the company making significant changes to its processes moving forward.

Ticketmaster has not responded to the Competition and Markets Authority’s report.

Oasis has pushed back against other ticket selling platforms by reportedly voiding up to 50,000 tickets that were made available on the secondary market by scalpers.