by
London
CNN
—
Hundreds of Oasis fans are looking back angrily after falling victim to a “landslide” of ticket sales scams.
Fans have lost an average of £346 ($449) to fraudsters ahead of the British band’s reunion tour next year, with some losing as much as £1,000 ($1,298), British lender Lloyds Banking Group said on Tuesday.
Lloyds said in a press release that an analysis of fraud reports filed by its customers in the month following Oasis’ August announcement of its comeback tour also found that more than 90% of scams started with social media advertisements and that the “vast majority” started on Facebook.
Facebook’s parent company Meta (META) declined to comment.
According to the bank, Oasis fans accounted for around 70% of all reported ticket fraud between August 27 and September 25.
Lloyds noted that scammers usually post fake advertisements on social media for discounted or inflated price tickets for events that have already sold out, taking fans’ money via bank transfer for tickets that do not exist.
“The fact that so many cases start with false entries on social media, often in violation of the platforms’ own rules, underlines the importance of these companies taking stronger action to tackle scams,” said Liz Ziegler, director of fraud prevention at Lloyds.
“Buying directly from reputable, authorized platforms is the only way to guarantee you are paying for a real ticket. Being asked to pay via bank transfer, especially by a seller you found on social media, should immediately set off alarm bells.”
Fraudsters have been attacking Oasis fans since the band – a staple of Nineties Britpop, fronted by feuding brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher – announced they would reunite for the first time since 2009 and play multiple shows at the United Kingdom and Ireland. It later also announced tour dates in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Australia.
Fans looking for tickets are furious about the eye-watering prices and long wait times online. Last month, Oasis’ tour promoters, Live Nation and SJM, told CNN they were canceling around 50,000 tickets for the band’s UK concerts, which were being resold on unofficial secondary sites, in an effort to prevent price gouging.
Lloyds said its customers who bought Oasis tickets on a major ticketing site in Britain splashed out more than any other music concert in the past three years, with an average of £563 ($731) per debit card transaction over the past three years. the first day of ticket sales in August. That’s higher than the average £342 ($444) spent on tickets to Taylor Swift’s UK tour last year, it noted.
