Buying resale Oasis tickets for their Live ’25 tour is easy – you would have to be mad to do so

Any touring musician with sense has booked shows in Europe for July this year. Get out of the UK while you still can. Avoid the wave of Oasis mania, like Beatlemania, but instead of screaming women, it’s vomiting men. It is hard to see those who splashed out hundreds of pounds on tickets to see the Gallagher brothers reform as anything but lobotomites. Sixteen years is not all that long if you think about it. If you have fallen for the back-and-forth over the last decade and a half between Liam and Noel, then you will also have fallen for the dynamic pricing model. Many did. Tickets to Live ‘25 are, you would think, impossible to get hold of the way fans are talking. Reddit threads and Facebook posts about their sheer and undeserved luck, like Charlie Bucket clutching a golden ticket smelling of urine and Red Stripe. Double urine. 

It is not the difficulty of finding a ticket, just the lingering moral question. Do you want to spend £500+ on a ticket to see the Gallagher brothers reunite? Some will say that the price is too good to pass on, others will see it as enough to buy their entire discography on vinyl, with change spare for the alcohol needed to get through Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. I find myself in the odd position of wanting a ticket to see Oasis for the same reason people head to the zoo. But to attend the show and not know the words to Acquiesce is the same as wearing a red target on my jacket, a landing zone for piss projectiles. July 4 marks the kick-off show for Oasis, a smart move from the Gallagher’s Grimm as they look to replace Independence Day.  

“It will not be televised,” Oasis promise. Good. Roll up to the ticket counter, then, and pay through the nose for what will most likely be a static and safe set, preying on nostalgia. There is nothing wrong with the return of a classic band, but how the group goes about assuring quality, is where Oasis has fallen well short. Between the irony of a band priding themselves on working class roots charging upwards of £300 per ticket to the fleecing of their fans through pop-up shops across the country, it feels as though the Oasis reunion is more grift than gift. Merchandising, ticketing, it’s all getting expensive for fans because artists are facing new financial burdens. What they are is anyone’s guess. Too little tuna on the buffet cart, perhaps? Sam Fender charged more for some hoodies and t-shirts than he did for a ticket to his shows at St. James’ Park.

Perhaps that is a sign of changing times. People want a memento of being there, even if they do not remember the show. Pop-up shops selling merch from the upcoming Oasis tour are a great way to pretend you were there. Cheaper, too. Three stripes Adidas clobber, a societal repellent, is sure to work quicker than calling everyone “r kid.” My neighbour once called me “r kid”, despite being three years older than him. I felt like a cretin by association. But by association is no way to become a bona fide Oasis fan. Plain toast listeners, those who dubbed Wunderhorse as “niche”, are the main target for those pop-up shops. Losers who put a red guitar and lemon emoji in their TikTok username are matched only by those who say they remember the glory days of Oasis. These are, unfortunately, the low-hanging fruits people collect and form their personality around.

By glory days, fans likely mean an underwhelming Glastonbury Festival performance, a bleak recording period that is double the length of their critical success, and ego-driven interviews mistaken for biblical comments. Were those days in the 1990s ever that great to begin with? Those who speak of seeing Oasis for the first time act as though they met with Christ or a member of My Bloody Valentine. The gilded honour of being thrown around in a crowd unsure of how to jump around in time to Live Forever, what fun. A new generation will experience that in 2025, and will be hounded by the old guard for daring to buy tickets. More money than sense does not cover it. At a time when public performance, even for the passing stranger, is more important than standing out or pursuing an interest not already in the public domain, those who are headed to Oasis gigs are doing so just to say they have.  

Whether the performance is of any quality is irrelevant. You were there. There will be no talk of these shows being a bit below standard because the vibe, the atmosphere, will carry it all. The bar is very high considering the other big three of the wretched “Britpop” term have and are performing at career-best levels. Blur and their The Ballad of Darren return was mesmerising and on the same scale as this Oasis tour, though shorter. Pulp has always been the gold standard when it comes to these four and the hum of nostalgia, but their latest album, More, did away with that feeling and brought the band comfortably into the next generation. Suede, too, has continued as a contemporary act that balances hits and great new songs. Oasis, though, is preying solely on the nostalgia factor. They have consolidated a lack of product, ever-present but passive demand, and a need for money, into a tour.  

By all means, enjoy it, but know how mad you would have to be to attend. Oasis getting back together after some relatively unfortunate solo endeavours from the Gallagher brothers is telling. Noel Gallagher’s set of EPs sold about as well as Beady Eye tour tickets, while Liam Gallagher’s romp through Definitely Maybe was a clear sign he was wanting back on the Oasis train. This tour is based on the promise of a one-and-done experience. No new music, no further dates. They have capitalised on the demand, created more by offering excessive prices (upwards of £500 per ticket in some cases) and will very likely announce more when people forget about this originally being a six-month tour with no addendums. You could get as much satisfaction out of shredding the cash.

Oasis’ reunion does not feel genuine – that is its major problem. If you want a ticket to it, you can still secure a nosebleed seat. It is not a game of luck; it is merely how deep in your pockets you are willing to go. For some, a second mortgage. Others would rather pass on hearing songs they could hear from either artist on their own for a third of the price. Oasis getting back together implies the Gallagher brothers had not been performing their greatest hits for the last decade as solo acts. Paul McCartney still performs songs by The Beatles. Neil Young still has a little love for Buffalo Springfield. Hearing them perform it without Ringo Starr or Crazy Horse does not change the core of the song. Yet people believe this will happen when two musicians who have not performed with one another for fifteen years take the stage next month. You have to validate the wild ticket price somehow, I suppose.