Ticketmaster plans to cancel around 50,000 resale tickets for Oasis reunion concerts in the UK due to breaches of the company's terms and services, Bulletin board has confirmed.
According to Ticketmaster, the canceled tickets were purchased using techniques prohibited for the Oasis tour. These include banning the purchase of more than four tickets per household, per show, and using multiple identities to purchase tickets — though these rules are often not enough to prevent both amateur and professional ticket scalpers from using VPNS or multiple credit cards to try and purchase tickets over the limit.
The news was first reported by the BBC.
Ticket 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 over the past decade to help scalpers beat the four-ticket-per-household limit.
Services offered by these rogue 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. That could change as soon as next year, thanks to a series of proposed bipartisan anti-ticket scalping laws aimed at strengthening law enforcement.
Ticketmaster says canceled tickets will be resold to fans in the coming days and weeks. However, while some lucky fans will get a chance to see Oasis as a result, the number is 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 on to try and snap up tickets.
Ticket sales are often fast-paced affairs with thousands of tickets being sold per second, making it impossible to stop sneaky buyers from trying to exceed ticket purchase limits. But after those sales, companies like Ticketmaster have months to review purchase and transaction data to identify problematic transactions. Those deemed to have broken the rules are generally refunded their purchases and their tickets are reassigned to other buyers with new barcodes.
Live Nation hailed these efforts as successful, noting that while it is not illegal to remove tickets in the UK, the enforcement system that penalizes buyers who exceeded Ticketmaster's terms and conditions helped keep thousands of tickets out of the secondary market.
