Ticketmaster Makes Voluntary Changes Following Oasis Tickets Investigation In UK

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has secured voluntary commitments from Ticketmaster, called undertakings, pertaining to the information displayed to fans buying tickets in the future.

The CMA had launched an investigation into the Oasis onsale in September 2024, which had raised several questions about how prices were set, and caused speculation about whether Ticketmaster had breached UK consumer protection law.

Fans had experienced price jumps when trying to purchase Oasis tickets back in September of last year. This naturally fuelled speculations that dynamic pricing had been at play.

Ticketmaster UK had always denied this, and rightfully so, as it never utilized any algorithm or other technology that would make ticket prices change automatically during an on-sale depending on real-time demand.

See: ‘Dynamic Pricing Doesn’t Exist In The UK’

What was actually in place during the Oasis onsale was a tiered ticket system, with a higher priced tier becoming available, once the lower-priced tier had sold out.

The CMA’s investigation, which launched Sept. 5, 2024, and closed last Friday, Sept. 25, 2025, confirms that Ticketmaster neither engaged in dynamic pricing nor unfair commercial practices.

It did, however, find, that the tiered ticket price system should have been communicated to fans more transparently: “Ticketmaster did not tell fans waiting in lengthy queues that standing tickets were being sold at 2 different prices, and that prices would jump as soon as the cheap tickets sold out,” the CMA writes.

It also found that “Ticketmaster sold some ‘platinum’ tickets at almost 2.5 times the price of ‘standard’ tickets – without sufficient explanation that these offered no additional benefits over some ‘standard’ tickets in the same areas of the venue.”

Ticketmaster, without any admission of wrongdoing or liability, has made the following undertakings to ensure fans have a better purchasing experience when trying to secure tickets for these exceptional blockbuster tours:

Telling fans 24 hours in advance if a tiered pricing system is being used, so fans know beforehand if multiple prices for the same type of ticket are in use, and that more expensive ones will be released once the cheaper ones sell out; providing more information about ticket prices during online queues, helping fans anticipate how much they might have to pay.

“This,” as CMA writes, “includes setting out the range of prices available for the event when people join the queue and updating fans swiftly when the cheaper tickets sell out.”

Further undertakings include not using misleading ticket labels to avoid giving the impression that one ticket is better than another when it is not actually the case; and providing regular reports to the CMA on how Ticketmaster has implemented the undertakings over the next two years.

Ticketmaster has also stopped using “platinum” labels in the UK, separate to providing undertakings, according to the CMA.

Ticketmaster “voluntarily committed to clearer communication about ticket prices in queues, to further improve the customer experience,” according to a statement released after the CMA investigation closed Sept. 25.

“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,” the statement continues.

Ticketmaster emphasized, “We welcome the CMA’s confirmation there was no dynamic pricing, no unfair practices and that we did not breach consumer law.”

It is important to remember that the exceptional demand for tours of the scale of Oasis’ isn’t representative of the vast amount of shows promoted by this industry every day.

The Oasis sale was the biggest in Ticketmaster history, with 10 million people queuing for tickets at peak times. Ticketmaster was the only platform able to handle the demand. The other ticket agent’s system crashed before the sale began.

On tours where it’s clear that demand will be exceptionally high, artists and their teams may opt for higher priced tickets specifically to undercut unofficial secondary ticketing.

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