The Oasis reunion is expected to be the most popular tour in British history, a solid gold financial hit for the band, managers, ticket sellers and stadium operators, as well as an economic phenomenon worth hundreds of millions for businesses cashing in on super-fans.
The news that Liam and Noel Gallagher have buried the hatchet – or at least put their differences aside for the sake of a reported £50m payday – has sparked a nationwide ticket scramble as the cost of living crisis is put to one side for the spectacle of seeing the band reunited after 15 years away.
Fans are set to make a mass pilgrimage next summer. Dates have been set for shows in Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin, as Oasis look to follow in the money-spinning footsteps of recent mega tours by Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.
“The idea of big-concept live music tours having a massive economic impact on local economies is the new normal,” said Mark Mulligan, the head of music analysis and founder at Midia Research. “Superstar acts today like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift have turned tours into cultural events in their own right. Now it’s the turn of Oasis.”
When Beyoncé took her world tour to Sweden, prices in its capital, Stockholm, rocketed. Michael Grahn, the chief economist at Danske Bank, called the phenomenon the “Beyoncé blip” as it increased the country’s inflation rate in the month she played two gigs.
Similarly in the UK, fans desperate to catch Taylor Swift’s Eras tour booked out hotels and sparked a debate over whether the shows had pushed up the UK inflation rate.
Members of the public have already turned to the social media platform X to complain about hotels in Dublin and Manchester cancelling existing bookings that clash with concert dates and reposting the rooms at an exorbitant price increase. One user claimed Dublin hotels were reposting rooms at three times the original price, while another posted a map claiming to show prices before and after the tour was announced.
Sacha Lord, Greater Manchester’s night-time economy adviser, urged the Maldron hotel chain to “do the right thing” after receiving complaints.
Hey @MaldronHotels.
I’m being contacted by several people who booked your hotel for the Oasis concert, to say their rooms have just been cancelled and are now back up for three times the price.
I’m sure this is a “computer error”… easy to correct.
Do the right thing.
— Sacha Lord (@Sacha_Lord) August 27, 2024
The chain, which has two hotels in Manchester, said that the cancellations were due to a “technical error” with too many bookings taken for the nights of the Oasis gigs.
“As a result, we are unable to honour all bookings made on these dates,” the company said. “We are actively engaging with customers regarding their bookings. This is not an attempt to resell rooms at inflated prices.”
Premier Inn, the UK’s biggest hotel chain, only has rooms available at Manchester airport on the nights of the Oasis concerts. Travelodge only has rooms 5 miles from the concert venue, Heaton Park, at twice the typical price of dates when the band are not playing.
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has been quick to spy the commercial and cultural opportunity the band’s return to the live stage will bring.
“Oasis reforming is great news for the city region and another massive opportunity for the eyes of the world to be back on Greater Manchester,” he said. “Greater Manchester is in a different moment now with a thriving economy, and Oasis returning and playing these shows in their home city will only boost this.
“We saw this cultural boom in the 1980s and 1990s … Greater Manchester often has a tendency to talk about its past glories. I think this is a fantastic opportunity for a new generation of Greater Mancunians.”
While the band members are set to enjoy a hefty payday from the reunion, so too will a group of promoters and ticket sellers driving the commercial side of the tour.
Manchester-based SJM, one of the largest concert promoters in the UK, founded by the owner of the Warrington Wolves rugby league club, Simon Moran, has partnered with fellow promoters MCD Productions and DF Concerts for the shows.
SJM – which puts on more than 2,000 concerts a year – is likely to see a significant boost to its revenues. Its most recently available accounts filed at Companies House show the business made a pre-tax profit of £17.7m on £275m in revenues in 2022.
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MCD has revealed that 80,000 tickets for the Oasis performance at Croke Park in Dublin will go on sale this weekend starting at €86.50 (£73) plus a booking fee.
However, the biggest winner is likely to be Live Nation, the US giant that owns Ticketmaster and hundreds of venues globally, which has seen its business boom thanks to pent-up demand for live music after the Covid lockdowns.
The company, which is dealing with the continuing fallout of a cyber-attack in June when hackers accessed the personal data of potentially hundreds of millions of Ticketmaster customers, reported a 36% increase in revenues last year to $22.7bn (£17.2bn). Live Nation’s global revenues have doubled since 2019.
Alice Enders, the director of research at Enders Analysis, said: “The mega-trend in consumer music spend is not recorded streaming services but the experience of live music, which super-fan clusters especially will pay a lot for.
“Oasis have been completely off both the recorded music and live music scenes, and reforming will drive ticket sales as well as streaming of their songs.”
Signs are that Oasis are attracting not just a renewed wave of interest from existing older fans but a new wave of generation Z music lovers who are embracing the band.
Spotify has seen a 690% increase in the number of daily streams globally of Oasis songs since the reunion tour announcement, compared with average streaming levels.
Other businesses that may be hoping to benefit from a halo effect include the clothing brand Pretty Green, which was founded by Liam Gallagher in 2009 but is now owned by Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, and merchandise sellers.
Birmingham City University has speculated that the 14-date UK tour could bring in £400m in ticket sales and add-ons alone. However, Enders is sceptical of such lofty projections on the basis that the initial tour is too small – unless fans are gouged on price. “Fourteen dates in the UK does not make a whale,” she said. “Unless the prices of tickets are higher than average [£100 plus booking fee], which would be dissuading to fans.”
The most lucrative world concert tour to date is estimated to be Swift’s Eras tour, which has grossed more than $1bn from 60 shows, followed by Coldplay, who made $945m over 153 shows between 2022 and 2024. Elton John, a perennial tourer, made $939m from 330 shows in his farewell extravaganza that ran from 2018 to 2023.
However, there is longer-term potential for Oasis to join the ranks of mega-earning tourers. There are plans to take the show international after the initial dates next year – if the Gallagher brothers can keep their long history of imploding on the back burner, that is.