Keir Starmer responds to Oasis price hikes, calling them “depressing”

nme.com:

Keir Starmer has now responded to the fiasco surrounding the Oasis ticket sale over the weekend at today’s (September 4) Prime Minister’s Questions.Last weekend (August 31), tickets went on sale for Noel and Liam Gallagher’s reunion tour as the newly reformed Oasis for a series of 17 summer stadium gigs across the UK and beyond.Despite the pair’s strong anti-tout stance and efforts to curb inflated re-sale prices, fans soon discovered that Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing system was in place, which meant that ticket costs increased in response to demand.According to experts, not warning fans prior to the sale may have been a breach of consumer law, and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has also called for a review into dynamic pricing and secondary ticket sites.

Additionally, the European Commission is also now investigating the issue. At MPs question time today, Labour MP Emma Foody asked about the issues surrounding the ticket sales and what the government will do in response.Starmer said he was pleased Oasis have got back together, but said it was “depressing’ to hear of the price hikes, and the government is reviewing what it can do to stop this.

You can watch the moment here:Many fans had additional issues that included reports of the Ticketmaster site “crashing” after receiving “503” errors before sales even began, fans being stuck in giant, several-hour-long-queues and others being kicked out of the queue for being mistaken for bots.Following the furore, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received 450 complaints about Ticketmaster adverts for the Oasis gigs with fans complaining the adverts made “misleading claims about availability and pricing”.