Twickets to cap Oasis resale ticket commission fee at £25 after price-surge row

Twickets, the “ethical” resale platform, has slashed its fees after Oasis fans complained they were being charged more than £100 extra for tickets.

The site, which promises that “buyers never pay more than the original face value of the ticket”, said it was capping its commission charge for Oasis tickets at £25.

Fans had accused Twickets of cashing in by placing a 15 per cent fees charge on resale tickets which had already been bought for double their original value under Ticketmaster’s controversial “dynamic pricing” policy.

Screenshots appeared to show a Twickets buyer’s fee of £138.74 added to two tickets listed at a face value of £348.35 plus fees each.

Another had a £101.24 charge on two tickets with a face value of £337.50 plus fees each. The practice should be “illegal” one fan wrote on X.

On Monday afternoon, Twickets founder Richard Davies announced a change of policy, saying: “Due to the exceptional demand for the Oasis tour in 2025, Twickets have taken the decision to lower our booking fee to 10% + a 1% transactional fee (to cover bank charges) for all buyers of their tickets on our platform. In addition we have introduced a fee cap of £25 per ticket for these shows. Sellers of tickets already sell free of any Twickets charge.”

Buyers hit with high charges previous to the fee change will receive the difference refunded.

On why fans had been asked to pay higher fees, Mr Davies said: “The face value of a ticket is the total amount it was first purchased for, including any booking fee. Twickets does not set the face value price, that is determined by the event and the original ticketing company. The price listed on our platform is set by the seller, however no one is permitted to sell above the face-value on Twickets, and every ticket is checked before listing that it complies with this policy.

“Twickets is a small business and by focusing on resale only doesn’t sell the volume of tickets that the major ticketing agencies do. Our booking fee goes towards the costs of running the platform, paying our team and ensuring that Twickets is a viable and sustainable business doing the right thing for fans.”

He said Twickets, which is backed by Oasis’ management, remained “hugely competitive against the secondary market, including sites such as Viagogo, Gigsberg and StubHub. Not only do these platforms inflate ticket prices way beyond their original face value but they also charge excessive booking fees, usually in the region of 30-40 per cent. Twickets by comparison charges an average fee of around 12.5 per cent.”

Ministers, who have pledged to cap ticket resale prices, are understood to be considering Twickets’ “face value plus 12-15 per cent” limit as a model for the whole industry. A consultation, set to take place this autumn, will be extended to probe questions around Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing.

Ministers are being urged to include the fees charged on resale tickets in the inquiry.

A ticketing industry source said: “The shift to dynamic pricing has made the situation more problematic as capped resale services operate on a 10-15 per cent fee model. That’s fine when a ticket is £50, but more problematic if they go up to £400 or something. It’s definitely something that should be part of the consultation.”

Twickets works in partnership with prominent artists including Ed Sheeran and Adele as the official resale platform for their tours.

Ignition management founder Marcus Russell, who guided Oasis to global fame in the 90s, was also an early investor in Twickets, when the company launched an equity crowdfunding round in 2016.

Other investors include Steve Parish, co-owner and chairman of Crystal Palace football club, Ian McAndrew, manager for Arctic Monkeys, and Harry Magee, the co-founder of Modest! Management (One Direction and Olly Murs).

‘I’m absolutely gutted’: Fans vent frustration at price hikes

Lee Clinch and his wife started queueing for tickets early on Saturday morning.

Immediately they were hit by a barrage of issues: Ticketmaster kept kicking them off the website, they were suspected of being bots, continuously forced to refresh and rejoin the queue anew.

Seven hours later, at 3pm, Mr Clinch’s wife got through – only to be faced with the inflated price of £455 for one standing ticket at Wembley.

 “We needed two tickets for me and my son,” Mr Clinch, 43, said. “I couldn’t afford £1000. He’s 15, a massive Oasis fan, and I’ve been into them my whole life. I’m absolutely gutted. I said to a few mates of mine I wish they never got back together, because it’s 15 years I’ve been waiting for the biggest band of my lifetime, and to not get a ticket is devastating.”

“Things are tough at the moment and this was giving people a little bit of light,” he continued. “It seems it’s going to be the rich people at these shows

“The whole thing just seems to be an absolute sham. It’s sickened me and I don’t know if I’ll ever try to go to gigs again.

“Liam and Noel have been very silent when they were quite lively before tickets went on sale. Nowadays it just seems normalised that people can just be ripped off and there’s literally nothing we can do.”

Romilly Wakeling, 46, had a similar experience.

She registered for pre-sale to no avail, joined the queue for the queue on Ticketmaster and got to the front seven hours later – “And the £75 seats that we wanted were now £489.70.” She didn’t buy the tickets.

“I was really unhappy,” Ms Wakeling said. “It shouldn’t be like this. It can be done fairer. Glastonbury manage to do it every single year. Oasis are a working class band for the people. They were the soundtrack of the ‘90s generation.

“And although people of my age group do have a lot more money than we had back then, I can’t think of anybody that would want to pay £2,000 for four really bad seated tickets at the back of Wembley.”

“The resale fee on Twicket is ridiculous,” she added. “Firstly with Ticketmasters dynamic pricing, none of the fans knew what to pay or what to expect and I think it’s really unfair that some people got to spend £150 for standing, some people paid £351.

“It’s the same experience, different prices. But apparently Oasis accepted dynamic pricing, and if they have that’s down on them. And a lot of fans are very, very unhappy. And I do feel it’s exploitation. Someone is trying to make as much money as possible, and it’s against the fans.

“And you had a lot of people that said yesterday, I woke up and I felt really sick that I’d actually paid this much money. I’d just queued for this long and I didn’t want to go without tickets.

“And I’ve seen Oasis more than 10 times, and I’ve seen more bad Oasis gigs than I have good Oasis gigs. So there’s going to be a lot of pressure on them to be good when people are paying £2,000 to go see them.”

In the end, Ms Wakeling bought hospitality tickets to the Cardiff show at £650 a head – including a two course meal, unlimited complimentary drinks, DJ and pre-lounge bar.

“The price was really expensive but looking at it now, compared to the fact people were paying for a standard seat for £500, it doesn’t actually seem that much money.”

The platform is profitable, with more than one million tickets listed each year. Hit hard by Covid, the business said gross revenues were up 140 per cent compared to 2019 by 2022.

Revenues are ploughed into improving the site’s technology and expansion plans across Europe.

According to Twickets, 74 per cent of ticket sales are made in the first 48 hours after a listing, while two-thirds of tickets sold are within a week of the event itself.

Twickets was designed to end the “immoral” practice of hiking face value ticket prices, Mr Davies has said. Tickets are “generally priced at a low level to open that event up to everyone, not just to those with the deepest pockets. And so exploiting those prices just for the opportunity to profiteer is in our view wrong, and means that genuine fans often miss out.”

Tickets advertised on Twickets often are sold at below face value. Potential buyers can make an offer for a ticket. If an event is approaching, the incentive for a seller to cut their losses and accept a lower price becomes greater.

A Whitehall source said the Government’s consultation would include proposals for “restricting the price of resold tickets to a set percentage of their original price, or limiting the number of tickets that resellers can list.”

They added: “We also want to make platforms accountable for the accuracy of information about tickets they sell, and ensure that the Competition and Markets Authority has the powers it needs to take swift action in order to protect consumers. By doing that, fans will be able to secure safe, affordable tickets and enjoy a memorable experience.”

Adam Webb, campaign manager at the FanFair Alliance anti-tout pressure group, said: “It’s really welcome news to see the Government announce an extension of their consultation into ticket resale, so that they’ll also now be looking at areas including dynamic pricing, technology and queuing systems.

“The lack of transparency in live music overall is increasingly problematic. This is an opportune moment to look at the market overall.”