Oasis UK tickets purchased by scalpers will be canceled by Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster plans to cancel around 50,000 resale tickets for Oasis' reunion concerts in the UK due to breaches of the company's terms and conditions and services. billboard has confirmed.

According to Ticketmaster, the canceled tickets were purchased using techniques prohibited for the Oasis tour. These include bans on purchasing more than four tickets per household per show and on using multiple identities to purchase tickets – although these rules are often not enough to stop both amateur and professional ticket sellers from using VPNS or multiple credit cards, to try and buy tickets over the limit.

The news was originally reported by the BBC.

Ticket purchase limits have long been a scourge for ticket scalpers, and a recent report from the National Independent Talent Organization found that a small cottage industry has emerged over the last decade to help scalpers get around the four-ticket-per-household limit .

Services offered by these unscrupulous players include VPNs to hide a shopper's IP address and bots that speed up the checkout process – the latter of which is widely considered illegal under the rarely enforced BOTS Act of 2016. That could change soon this year, thanks to a series of proposed bipartisan anti-ticket scalping laws aimed at improving enforcement of the law.

According to Ticketmaster, the canceled tickets will be sold back to fans in the coming days and weeks. Although this will give some lucky fans the chance to see Oasis, the number is still far from enough to meet actual demand. When Oasis announced their UK tour in August, 1.4 million tickets were on sale – but more than 10 million fans from 158 countries logged in to try to buy tickets.

Ticket sales are often a fast-paced process, with thousands of tickets sold per second, making it impossible to stop sneaky buyers from exceeding ticket purchase limits. However, after these sales close, companies like Ticketmaster have months to review purchase and transaction data to identify problematic transactions. Those found violating the rules typically have their purchases refunded and their tickets reassigned to other buyers with new barcodes.

Live Nation hailed the effort as a success, noting that while the sale of tickets is not illegal in the United Kingdom, the enforcement system that penalizes buyers who violate Ticketmaster's terms and conditions has helped keep thousands of tickets off the secondary market .