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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Jacob Phillips,Sarah Ping and William Mata

Oasis fans demand extra tour dates as 'millions' trapped in ticket queue hell

Die-hard Oasis fans have demanded the Britpop band put on extra tour dates after they were trapped for hours waiting in “the most painful ticket experience ever”.

Fans hoping to secure tickets to see the band’s reunion tour next year have shared their “nightmare” situations after they queued for hours in the hope of seeing the Gallagher brothers back together on stage.

General tickets went on sale for the band’s comeback tour at 9am on Saturday for those in the UK and 8am for fans in Ireland.

But online platforms experienced outages and tech issues, leaving fans in a virtual queue for around five hours.

A message on the Ticketmaster website at 2.37pm told those still queuing online on Saturday that the "inventory is now very limited", with some ticket types no longer available.

The company's Irish site said the shows in Dublin's Croke Park had sold out so far, with more tickets likely to be released later.

Many took their frustration out on Ticketmaster after being kicked out of the queue or were deemed to be bots, which prevented them from purchasing tickets to see Noel and Liam Gallagher reunited after the band broke up following a backstage brawl 15 years ago.

The band has also warned fans that any “counterfeit” relisted tickets “will be cancelled” as some cropped up on Viagogo for up to £5,909.

One lifelong fan shared his annoyance at the handling of the sale - but has been successful in buying tickets.

Oasis mega fan Dan Johnston with Liam Gallagher (left) (Dan Johnston)

Dan Johnston bought four tickets at £350 each to see Oasis in London.

He told the Standard: “If a company says a ticket will be £151 and that these tickets cannot be sold for anything more than face value or the tickets will be cancelled.

“How can they then justify themselves upping the price £200 extra before they even sold out.”

Long-time fan Scott McLean tried to secure tickets to see Oasis in Dublin but was pushed back 700,000 places in the queue after he was kicked out of the Ticketmaster queue.

The 28-year-old data analyst from Belfast, Northern Ireland, logged into his account on the ticket-selling website at 7.30am on Saturday ahead of Irish sales opening at 8am.

He was in a queue of 20,000 for about 30 minutes before selecting four tickets to see the band’s show at Croke Park.

However, his browser began buffering for half an hour as he tried to make the purchase, prompting him to contact the Ticketmaster customer service account on X, formerly Twitter, for advice.

“I followed their advice, cleared my cookies and cache on my browser and then it kicked me out completely. It just came up to that error screen after I followed their guidance,” he told the PA news agency.

“I had to rejoin the queue and I ended up about 700,000 places worse off after following their guidance.”

He said he feels “frustration and anger, not much more than that”, adding: “It’s just tickets for a concert after all, but I really wanted to go.”

Meanwhile, George Buka, 35, from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, attempted to buy tickets to see Oasis in the UK and described his experience on Ticketmaster as a “nightmare”.

“It’s been an absolute nightmare of an experience. I’ve been doing it since 8am this morning, you have to queue in order to join the queue, you can’t log in,” he told PA.

“They don’t have the facilities or capacity to run this kind of event. But it’s not the first time Ticketmaster has made it difficult for fans to try and buy tickets.”

Mr Buka, who began waiting at 8am on Saturday, said he faced long waiting times in queues, website crashes and failed log-ins.

He added: “One of my sessions was suspended because they thought I was a bot. I only had one tab open and then I finally was able to join a queue at about 10am.”

He is concerned tickets have been purchased for the purpose of being resold at a higher rate via third-party ticket providers.

“If you go on other websites, even though Oasis said it wouldn’t be happening, people will still find a loophole,” Mr Buka said.

“The touts, the influencers, they’ll find a way of getting to the show and just absolutely kill the music industry day.

“I really wanted to go, but it’s just ruined by morning now.”

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