Oasis reunion tour tickets cause online frenzy

Millions of Oasis fans All Around The World were up early on Saturday morning as tickets went on sale for the British band's highly-anticipated reunion tour next year.

But patience was required as ticket websites left them waiting online for hours as Part of The Queue.

Tickets went on sale at 9 a.m. UK time, four days after brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher announced that they were putting an end to a 15-year family feud to reunite the seminal band which shot to stardom at the head of the "Britpop" movement in the 1990s.

The band initially announced 12 UK concerts in July and August 2025: two in Cardiff, two in Edinburgh, four in London and four in the Gallaghers' home town, Manchester, plus two in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, which went on sale one hour earlier.

Additional Edinburgh, London and Manchester dates were added due to demand, which predictably led to long waits as official ticket sellers Ticketmaster and SJM Concerts slowly funneled fans through online "lobbies" and into "waiting rooms" to join "queues" of up to 100,000 users which ultimately ended on shopping pages where fans could buy up to four tickets per person.

By early evening all the tickets were sold out.

Ticketmaster and SJM Concerts queues and crashes

While fans using SJM's "Gigs and Tours" website were confronted with an error message asking fans to "please bear with us" as the site failed to load, those who opted for Ticketmaster just had to Roll With It as, Little By Little, progress was made.

"Millions of fans are accessing our site so have been placed in a queue," said a Ticketmaster spokesperson, insisting that it was "moving along" and the site had not crashed.

In a later update, over two hours after tickets went on sale, Ticketmaster moved to reassure fans still stuck in virtual queues, saying: "Tickets are available for all dates, so please continue to hold your place in the queue."

One exasperated fan on social media platform X asked: "Can we just go back to the old days of queuing outside the record shop to buy tickets please?"

General admission tickets at all-standing venues such as Manchester's Heaton Park were priced at £150 (€178, $197), with the seats at venues with seated capacity such as London's Wembley Stadium and Cardiff's Principality Stadium ranging from £73 to about £205. Premium packages cost up to £506.

After some tickets sold in a massively over-subscribed pre-sale on Friday night appeared on secondary resale sites at inflated prices as high as £6,000, the band's management warned that re-sold tickets would be canceled and wouldn't work.

Gallagher brothers end family feud

An expensive affair, Some Might Say, but clearly worth it for Oasis' dedicated army of fans who wondered if a reunion would ever happen after singer Liam and guitarist Noel spectacularly fell out in 2009, with Liam smashing one of Noel's guitars at a festival in Paris.

Since then, both brothers have pursued solo careers with varying degrees of success, but fans Kept The Dream Alive that the pair would make up – which they seemingly have done, 30 years on from the release of their debut album, "Definitely Maybe," in August 1994.

The record, featuring the hit singles Supersonic and Live Forever, went straight to number one in the UK Albums Chart and became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history at the time.

The band's 1995 follow-up, "(What's The Story?) Morning Glory," which featured famous hits Wonderwall, Don't Look Back In Anger and Champagne Supernova, was released at the same time "The Great Escape" by London-based rivals Blur, at the height of what the UK press dubbed the "Battle of Britpop."

Oasis: the political and economic effect

The sudden rise of bands like Oasis and Blur in the UK coincided with a landslide election win for Tony Blair's center-left Labour Party in 1997, bringing an end to 18 years of Conservative rule which had seen mass closures of industry and rising unemployment in cities such as Manchester, where the Gallaghers had grown up.

This time around, the Oasis reunion comes after another 14 years of Conservative-led government were ended by another Labour landslide under Keir Starmer.

Meanwhile, the UK economy could be in for a Supersonic boost akin to that prompted by American pop star Taylor Swift's recent tour, with British hoteliers and pub owners among those hoping for a boom in business from fans traveling from across the world.

The band has promised sets "full of wall-to-wall classics," showcasing the "charisma, spark and intensity that only comes when Liam and Noel Gallagher are on-stage together."

"The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over," tweeted frontman Liam, announcing the reunion on Tuesday. "Come see. It will not be televised."

Edited by: Louis Oelofse