It is official. After 15 years in the wilderness, OASIS is getting the band back together.
Tickets have gone on sale in the UK and caused quite a stir. According to the Guardian, “Fans said they queued online for hours only to find that the price of the £135 standing tickets had risen to £355.”
Let’s unpack this…
My Grand Prix ticket experience
I’ll start with a personal story. 3 Years ago, I asked my dad what was on his bucket list. Top of the list was to go to the Australian Grand Prix. Whilst he has always loved cars and motor sport, he had never been to the Grand Prix. My initial reaction was guilt: I had attended twice as a guest of a corporate partner, and yet my father had never been.
My brother and I started researching how and when to buy tickets. In the meantime, we booked accommodation and flights for ourselves, our wives, our children, and of course our dad.
The big day came. The 2nd of December 2021. Tickets went on sale at 10am. We knew that tickets would be popular, so we were well prepared. In advance we researched which stands offered the best viewing angles, and the cost of tickets in each stand. We identified and agreed on our preferred section in the Prost stand. We both set up separate computers so we could increase our chances of getting towards the front of the queue.
I got to the front of the queue before my brother. To cut a long story short, the first screen indicated that there were some tickets available. After navigating some additional screens, I was taken to a page that said that there were no more tickets available in the Prost section.
A few minutes later, my brother had the identical experience. We tried again, this time in a different stand. And this time, we couldn’t get past the starting grid.
After the initial excitement of getting to the front of the queue (AKA pole position), we ended up crashing out. Or perhaps it was the booking website that crashed out. Either way, what a let-down.
Fortunately, my personal story had a happy ending. More about that later. However, tens of thousands of grand prix fans weren’t so lucky.
The Taylor Swift ticket experience
It was the 29th of June 2023, the day tickets for Taylor Swift’s February 2024 Australian tour went on sale. The story was very much like my Grand Prix Experience. But bigger. Much bigger.
Around 600,000 fans were lucky enough to secure tickets to the tour. However, it is estimated that twice that number missed out. That’s more than 1 million disappointed Swifties. For the record, I wasn’t one of them!
Whilst many of those disappointed fans would “shake it off”, others were irate. And they took out their frustration on social media. After all, is there any group more likely to go viral on Tick Tock than a bunch of aggrieved female Gen Zs?
Many of those irate fans wouId not normally have criticised their beloved Taylor Swift in public. But these weren’t normal circumstances. They felt so dis-concert-ed. “TayTay, look what you made me do”, was a common catch cry.
There just aren’t enough seats
What do the Grand Prix and Taylor Swift concerts have in common? Apart from needing to take earplugs to both.
Fixed Supply. You can’t build a bigger stadium. You can’t create more seats. You can only sell the seats you have.
This raises an important question. If 2 million people want to see a concert and there are only 600,000 tickets available, how do you allocate the limited tickets to the large fan base? Whatever you do, the sad reality is that lots of people are going to miss out.
Traditionally, the entertainment industry has always solved the problem on a “first in first served” basis.
Oasis Reunites
Fast forward 2 years to September 2024. Oasis has announced its reunion and tickets have gone on sale in the UK.
To avoid the problems experienced by the grand prix and Taytay fans, Oasis took a different approach to ticket pricing. They decided to use Dynamic Pricing
Every few minutes, the ticketing system ran an algorithm which matched supply and demand, and then adjusted ticket prices accordingly. The algorithm would have taken into account the conversion rate at different prices, and worked out what price would lead to a conversion rate which would match supply with demand. If it looked like the tickets would sell out too fast, the algorithm would increase the price. If sales slowed too much, the price might reduce a bit. The great aspect of this approach is that there would be enough tickets for everyone. Or at least, everyone who wanted to pay.
But then, as they do, fans found something else to complain about. They complained that the price had increased while they were in the queue. And I have to say, I think their complaints were legitimate. Imagine this: You start the process of ordering a ticket. The price is £135. You sit in the queue for 30 minutes. And by the time you reach the front of the queue, the price has increased to £355. You would be angry. And rightly so.
How could Oasis have avoided these complaints?
Quite easily. By making 2 improvements to their process:
- Better estimating ticket prices before the tickets went on sale. Oasis Management could have conducted more research to work out that tickets would have been around £355.
- By honouring the price they indicated. That is, if the price was £135 when someone joined the queue, the ticketing agency should have honoured that price.
For example, the agency might have indicated £300 to the first group of fans, and then committed to that price. In the meantime, if they saw that demand was stronger than estimated, they could have increased their indicative price to £355 and then honoured that price for the next group of customers.
Would there still be complaints if they adopted this approach? YES! There will always be complaints. You can never please everyone. The most common complaint would be that the tickets are too expensive. But, hey, so are Ferraris, waterfront homes and Rolex watches. They way I see it… if Ferrari can charge £500,000 for a SF90XX Spider, surely Oasis is entitled to charge £350 for a concert ticket.
And if you don’t like that. If you can’t accept it. If you are still aggrieved. I only have one piece of advice for you… Don’t look back in anger.
Post Script
One of our relatives had a contact at Ticketmaster, and she was able to get hold of some Grand Prix tickets. My dad had a smile from ear to ear for the entire Grand Prix weekend. I am eternally grateful.
Post Post Script
You might be wondering, what is the relevance for the Build to Rent industry?
The obvious learning is that the dynamic pricing approach adopted by Oasis will lead to the highest revenue.
There is another subtle message. We often think that offering lower prices will make our customers happy. While that might be true for those fortunate people who are able to buy tickets (or get to live in our beautiful buildings), it also leaves a whole lot of devastated would-be customers. Those who missed out. This applies to every industry with fixed supply. And there is no industry where supply is more fixed than residential property.
