How Ticketmaster's 'in demand' pricing works

'In demand' is Ticketmaster's name for tickets whose price moves with real-time demand — the mechanism that turned £148.50 Oasis standing tickets into £355 while fans queued. Here's the mechanics, the fallout, and the practical guidance.

The mechanics

1. The promoter (not Ticketmaster alone) opts into in-demand pricing and sets bands.
2. During the sale, an algorithm — or manual revenue management — moves prices between bands based on queue depth and sell-through.
3. Fans see the current price only when they reach the front; there's no committed price while queuing.

The economic logic is airline yield management: capture the surplus that touts would otherwise capture. The difference is that a fan blames the airline for nothing and the artist for everything.

The Oasis affair and what changed

August 2024: reunion on-sale, standing tickets jumping to ~2.5× face mid-queue, national front pages, and a CMA investigation into whether fans got fair pricing information. Through 2025 Ticketmaster agreed to clearer in-queue communication about pricing, and government consultations examined resale caps and pricing transparency together. Artists now routinely announce 'no dynamic pricing' as a fan-relations position.

If you're a fan

• The listed price before the queue is not a commitment — decide your walk-away number before joining.
• Price drops happen too: unsold in-demand inventory can fall back to face late in the cycle.
• Face-value resale (Twickets, official exchanges) is consistently the sane secondary route.

If you're an organiser

Nothing about in-demand pricing is available — or advisable — at independent scale. Pre-announced quantity tiers deliver the demand response without the headlines; see dynamic pricing for events. And the platforms that make tiering free of per-ticket fee distortion are the ones with no per-ticket fees at all.