Expert analysis: Where Ticketmaster and Oasis went wrong with dynamic pricing

Esade Professor Marco Bertini, an expert in dynamic pricing models, is receiving an increasing number of requests from students and journalists to understand this controversial practice. 

He has recently explained how dynamic pricing has the potential to keep customers happy while also bringing in more money for businesses — if done correctly. 

But the debacle over ticketing for the Oasis reunion tour has brought the debate into the public forum once again, with angry fans demanding to know how tickets advertised for £135 can jump to £355 by the time they’d reached the front of the online queue. 

There are some basic principles to dynamic pricing, like being transparent about it

The UK band has remained mostly silent on the issue, apart from frontman Liam Gallagher’s curt “SHUTUP” response to a comment on X claiming the band was ripping off fans. Ticketmaster, the retailer managing sales of the sought-after tickets, said it is “committed to cooperating with the Competition and Markets Authority”, the UK body responsible for fair trading, which is currently investigating the case. 

Bertini, a globally recognized authority on the issue, explains why on this occasion, they got it badly wrong. 

A good idea, badly executed

“Any pricing has to change over time because of taxes, or valuations, or shortages of supply, or because the weather has changed...” Bertini says. “It’s not necessarily a bad practice. The problem is always in the way it's implemented.” 

And according to Bertini, there were a number of key ways in which Oasis and Ticketmaster mismanaged sales. 

There are some basic principles, like being transparent about it. “You should state the particular system you’re using and how the price is going to vary, whether it is in relation to the number of tickets available or if the price may change while you're on hold,” says the marketing professor. 

And if prices change, you really want to give customers real options, to opt out or to downgrade. “Because if people don't have options, they don't have this sense of agency that they can decide their own future. And then they feel cornered,” he explains. 

Monopolizing the market

For a business operating in a competitive market, sneakily escalating prices at the last minute with no alternative would quickly result in a trashed reputation and diminishing client base. But as Bertini points out, Ticketmaster knew they had the market cornered and could have been transparent — but chose not to. 

“In this specific case you've got a company which is close to being a monopoly,” he says. “And relative to this, Ticketmaster — and the parent company Live Nation Entertainment — has a history of not being very customer-centric when it comes to pricing.”  

For companies, the question is whether the criticism is significant enough to harm their brand in the long term

There’s another classic example regarding pricing malpractices. When you're buying tickets, they may seem inexpensive at first. However, as you proceed through the payment process, you might encounter additional fees, such as a venue fee, ticketing fee, delivery fee... “That's another trick they use to make the prices appear lower at the beginning, it's called drip pricing”, Bertini points out. 

“But if you feel like you have to hide the reasons why you vary your prices or why you're pricing in a certain way, there's probably something wrong”, he adds. And according to the expert, if another business without a history of pricing ‘tricks’ had implemented dynamic pricing as Ticketmaster did, there might have been a different reaction from the public. 

This is different from the naive assumption that companies can completely avoid criticism by acting correctly. They can’t. “You’re always going to have people complaining if you change prices, even if it’s due to inflation or a similar reason”, Bertini notes. For companies, the question should be whether the criticism is significant enough to harm their brand in the long term or force reactions they would prefer to avoid. 

How to get it right

When used correctly, Bertini is keen to reiterate that dynamic pricing can benefit the customer as much as the business.  

“Dynamic pricing simply means that a price changes over time, so virtually every business practices it,” he explains. “When a major retailer offers discounts, that's dynamic pricing. Nowadays it happens more frequently and on a wider scale because of technology that can target customers in a more sophisticated way.” 

The classic example is airlines, which were the first to take advantage of technology-driven dynamic pricing. “Everybody accepts that when you board a plane, passengers are paying different prices, and those prices change over time. Some get really low fares, while others pay more,” he says. 

Theme parks are another great example: they offer tickets at lower prices during off-peak times to balance customer flow, giving more people the opportunity to enjoy the experience at an affordable price. Customers are happy while the company secures profits during the off-season. 

Exploiting loyalty

But when it comes to the Oasis tickets sold by Ticketmaster, Bertini is struggling to see the logic. 

“People have been waiting and wishing for this band to come back together for many years. That said, there are differences in how much people are willing to pay. And the supply of tickets is small, so the people who are the most interested will be the ones who are willing to pay more. They were already expecting to pay a lot.” 

For him, this proves that “the price they were asked to pay is not necessarily the problem. The problem is the process by which they went about doing it. There was no transparency, there was no advance warning, there was no time to think about accepting the new price or opting for a lower-priced ticket.” 

According to the pricing expert diagnosis, “It has caused frustration and tension among their fans and it’s probably a good example of how not to apply dynamic pricing.”