Oasis UK tickets purchased by Scalpers to be canceled by Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster plans to cancel around 50,000 resale tickets for Oasis’ UK reunion concerts due to violations of the company’s terms and services, Billboard have confirmed.

According to Ticketmaster, the canceled tickets were purchased using techniques that have been banned for the Oasis tour. These include a ban on buying more than four tickets per household, per show and using multiple identities to buy tickets – although these rules are often not enough to deter amateurs and professional ticket scalpers alike from using VPNS or multiple credit cards to try and buy tickets across the border.

The news was originally reported by BBC.

Ticket purchase limits have long plagued ticket scalpers, and a recent report by the National Independent Talent Organization found that a small cottage industry has sprung up in the past decade to help scalpers beat the four-ticket-per-ticket limit. household.

The services offered by these unscrupulous players include VPNs to hide a buyer’s IP address and bots that speed up the checkout process — the latter of which are generally considered illegal under the rarely enforced BOTS Act of 2016. It That could change as soon as next year, thanks to a series of proposed bipartisan anti-ticket scalping laws aimed at strengthening enforcement of the law.

Ticketmaster says the canceled tickets will be sold back to fans in the coming days and weeks. But while some lucky fans will get a chance to see Oasis as a result, the numbers are still far from meeting the real demand. There were 1.4 million tickets on sale when Oasis announced their UK tour in August – but more than 10 million fans from 158 countries have logged in to try and buy tickets.

Ticket sales are often fast-paced affairs with thousands of tickets being sold per second, making it impossible to prevent sneaky buyers from trying to exceed ticket purchase limits. But after those sales close, companies like Ticketmaster have months to review purchase and transaction data to identify problematic transactions. Those deemed to have violated the rules generally have their purchases refunded to them and their tickets redistributed to other buyers with new barcodes.

Live Nation has hailed these efforts as a success, noting that while ticket scalping is not illegal in the UK, the enforcement system that penalizes buyers who bypassed Ticketmaster’s own terms and conditions has helped keep thousands of tickets away from it secondary market.