Oasis fans have lost more than £2 million in fake ticket scams, bank claims

The reunion tour of Britpop brothers Oasis has cost fans over £2 million collectively in scams, according to Lloyds Banking Group.

Lloyds reported that fans on average lost £436 per scam. This is £200 more than the average concert ticket scam loss usually seen by the bank.

Basing the calculation on the volume of fraud reports made by its own customers, Lloyds said Oasis fans made up more than half (56 per cent) of all reported concert ticket scams so far this year. They noted that one customer lost over £1,700 in an attempt to get a ticket.

35-year-olds to 44-year-olds were the most affected age group, totalling 30 per cent of cases. Those based in Manchester, where Oasis originated, made up the highest number of scammed people. Those in Edinburgh and Warrington were also particularly hard done by.

“The fact that so many cases start with fake listings on social media, often in violation of the platforms’ own rules, underscores the importance of these companies taking stronger action to tackle scams,” the Fraud Prevention Director at Lloyds, Liz Ziegler, said.

The high demand for tickets comes after it was found that Ticketmaster “may have breached” consumer protection law when tickets went on sale last summer.

Ticketmaster sold more than 900,000 tickets for the reunion shows. However, dynamic pricing was unknown before tickets went on sale, which led to some paying as much as £355 for tickets advertised at £149.

Hayley Fletcher, interim senior director of consumer protection at the CMA, said in a statement following an investigation: “Fans reported problems when buying Oasis tickets from Ticketmaster and we decided those concerns warranted investigation.”

Fletcher continued: “We’re concerned that Oasis fans didn’t get the information they needed or may have been misled into buying tickets they thought were better than they were.”