MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Ticketmaster is in trouble again, this time for the way it priced tickets to next year's Oasis reunion tour in the U.K. A U.K. watchdog agency has opened an investigation, and it echoes some of the same concerns raised here in the U.S. over Taylor Swift's tour, as NPR's Isabella Gomez Sarmiento reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DON'T LOOK BACK IN ANGER")
OASIS: (Singing) Slip inside the eye of your mind.
ISABELLA GOMEZ SARMIENTO, BYLINE: Here's how people bought tickets for next year's Oasis shows. First, there was a wait to get onto Ticketmaster's website, then a queue to buy the tickets. Ella Annable of London, England, was on FaceTime with her dad through this process until they made it in.
ELLA ANNABLE: It took us, like, three or four hours when we'd gotten them. And, obviously, you have to be real quick with your decision-making 'cause it's - you have, like, a countdown in the corner.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: That countdown is one of the main concerns the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority is investigating. In a press release, the CMA said it is scrutinizing whether fans were put under pressure to buy tickets in a short period of time without understanding exactly how much they were paying. That's because Ticketmaster used something called dynamic pricing, where ticket prices vary based on demand. Here's Rebecca Allensworth, professor of antitrust law at Vanderbilt University.
REBECCA ALLENSWORTH: If you have a crush of people trying to get tickets to a concert and dynamic pricing is turned on, the price for those tickets goes up.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Dynamic pricing is not illegal, but the CMA is investigating whether Ticketmaster was transparent about it ahead of time. Ella Annable says, in the rush to check out, she and her dad bought the first tickets they could get.
ANNABLE: And we, like, bought them, and I was looking at a little bit more research online. I was like, I literally think these are the same as what we could have got a couple of hours ago but just more expensive.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: In 2022, Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation, experienced a similar controversy in the U.S. for how it handled sales for another big star.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BAD BLOOD")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) 'Cause baby, now we got bad blood.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: This happened with Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, eventually leading the Justice Department to sue Live Nation over how it monopolized the live music industry. In the U.K., the investigation is focused on what the company is or is not allowed to do to its customers. Rebecca Allensworth sees a through line between both cases.
ALLENSWORTH: The connection between those two things is that if you have a lot of market power, if you don't face a lot of competition, then you can really take advantage of the people who buy from you.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: The outcome of the U.K. investigation will not have a legal impact on the U.S. lawsuit, but the optics won't help, says Allensworth. In a statement to NPR, Ticketmaster said it is committed to cooperating with the CMA.
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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