I saw Oasis on their reunion tour. Drinks were expensive, merch was extortionate — but the experience was priceless.
Sitting in a packed-out tube carriage heading to London's Wembley Stadium, I had high expectations for the night ahead.
The sun was out, the drinks had been flowing, and more importantly, Oasis was back.
But as a lifelong sports fan who's experienced one too many heartbreaks, I've learned to be a little suspicious when things seem "too good."
I need not have worried, however.
It had been 16 years since brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher infamously split following a spat ahead of a scheduled set in Paris — and the occasion was lost on no one.
The band was on ferociously good form right from the raucous openers "Hello" and "Acquiesce" through to the epic climax of "Champagne Supernova."
There was no time for " kiss cams" here. The 90,000-strong crowd locked onto every word as the group rolled off many of its most iconic numbers and paid tribute to the late, great Ozzy Osbourne.
A year ago, however, some of the initial buzz over Oasis' unexpected comeback announcement was dampened slightly by controversy over the alleged use of surge ticket pricing, which companies selling products online sometimes use to increase prices as market demand rises.
Many Oasis fans had to queue for hours to secure tickets through Ticketmaster and saw the cost of some tickets shoot from £135, or about $181, to more than £350, which is around $470. I got off lightly, paying £150.
Ticketmaster has denied using a "dynamic pricing" model. Andrew Parsons, managing director at Ticketmaster UK, told MPs earlier this year that the platform does not change prices in "any automated or algorithmic way," adding that they are set in advance with "event organisers and their teams."
Other fans faced the prospect of skyrocketing prices on secondary sites.
One London-based fan who missed out on tickets on Ticketmaster told Business Insider at the time that he'd seen tickets listed for as much as £6,347 on one secondary site.
Friday night's concert was also anything but cheap. A pint of beer broke the dreaded £8 barrier. T-shirts emblazoned with the brothers' faces or the band's logo were going for £40, while anything from the Adidas Originals x Oasis collection cost considerably more — I spied one "football shirt" selling for £85.
Oasis is set to play seven shows at Wembley this year. The Live '25 Tour will also see the group perform at venues across North America, including Chicago's Soldier Field, the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, and the Rogers Stadium in Toronto.
For those lucky enough to have gotten tickets to Friday's show, any lingering bitterness over pricing seemed to have evaporated completely by the time the band stepped off stage.
It wasn't just the chance of seeing two of rock and roll's most charismatic characters back together — it was a few hours of unfiltered joy and camaraderie that one should not take for granted these days.
If you asked me now how much I'd have paid to go to the concert, I'd struggle to put a number on it. It's an experience that feels impossible to quantify but that will certainly live forever.
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