On August 26, I woke up as if it were a normal Monday, I rose from bed and, with my arms overflowing, I woke up. But as soon as I got to the hallway, I knew that that wasn't one of those monotonous, heartless Monday forever. I found my parents in front of the computer reading the newspaper and my father gave me the news of the day: “Hey, Jon, do you know Oasis has come back?” Boom. I struggled to absorb the news. After fifteen years of silence, oasis, one of my favorite bands of British pop, he returns to the stage and inaugurates 2025 with a unique tour, fourteen concerts, in the most emblematic stages of the UK and Ireland: Heaton Park, Wembley, Croke Park… I had been hearing the rumors about it for weeks, although I decided to be cautious, because I’m one of those people who “pack” easily. But on this occasion, there was an opportunity to be hype, hostile, the relationship of the Gallagher brothers is more unstable than the politics of the Middle East and if they have been able to fix them… how can I not be able to get a couple of tickets for these concerts?

On August 31 I woke up as if it was a special Saturday, as if it was Christmas. I got out of bed and didn't realize it, I put the alarm clock at 08:00 (one hour before the check-out), and at 08:05 I was already on the website Ticketmaster.uk, the home official salesman's page. She danced all ready and nerves. Was it possible that I was about to fulfill one of those unusual dreams in my life?

Unfortunately, in a few hours, what was a dream became frustration. To begin with, the first slap, with over a million tickets for sale and a dozen million people waiting in the queue. You don't have to be a statistician to know that we were less likely to get a couple of tickets than to hit the weekend's quiniela. However, I was a lucky one. I had before me a fan 105,678 waiting for tickets for the Edinburgh concert and for seven hours, they have read it well, after seven long hours in line (Saturday to take from the popa) I managed to get to buy tickets. There were still three thousand tickets left to buy and the illusion came back. Naïve, because then I got the second slap, the cheapest ticket to 487 pounds. It is not possible, it is not possible. EUR 500 for a space 200 metres from the stage? In addition, I have read on the BBC that the tickets will be taken at £75-150, hear, English is not my mother tongue, but I do not think I have understood so badly what I put in the article. That's where the third and final couch came to me. The rock band intended to sell their tickets through a "dynamic pricing" system. In other words, the algorithm modifies prices according to supply and demand, that is, the higher the demand, the higher the price. I knew that applications like Uber or airline companies used this method, but I didn't think they were able to do it in the music world, especially with a benchmark rock group of working class. I have read on the Internet that this concept is quite new in the world of concert tickets, that Ticketmaster used it for the first time in 2022… Total, in the end I could not buy tickets, but many others yes, because in 10 hours they were all exhausted. Sold out, as it is said. Today, I have looked at the resale websites and prices have risen even further, reaching EUR 1,200, 2,500 and 7,000 respectively.

I sincerely believe that Tickemaster and the entrepreneurs who played too much in small monopoly are piercing the grave of music. It is understandable that businessmen want to bury one of the few scenarios that once existed to spread anti-system messages. But I find it hard to understand that the carpenters who have built the coffin are the ones who once propagated messages against the system. I confess that I have been tempted to buy one of those ultra-expensive tickets, but I do not think I am able to put the last nail that will close the coffin. After all (and now comes the self-criticism), Tickemaster puts the carrot, yes, but we are a crew of donkeys as short as to swallow the hook. We are the wretched graves to which, on the pretext of posture and of wanting to participate, we touch the last musical chord.

Jon Iturregi Martin