Recently, the highly anticipated reunion tour of the iconic UK band Oasis has captured the attention of music fans worldwide. With the buzz surrounding their return, the demand for tickets has been through the roof. Unfortunately, the ticketing experience has left many fans more than disheartened, thanks to an avoidable problematic implementation of dynamic pricing.
The crux of the issue lies in the use of dynamic pricing, a strategy where ticket prices fluctuate based on demand. While this approach is often beneficial in optimizing revenue, it can also lead to significant consumer frustration if not executed properly.
Lack of Communication: The promoter and ticketing company failed to adequately inform customers about the use of dynamic pricing. Fans were caught off guard when they encountered unexpectedly high prices—up to £350 for a ticket that started at £150. This lack of transparency eroded trust and led to widespread dissatisfaction.
Long Queue Times: The combination of massive demand and dynamic pricing created extraordinarily long waits in online ticket queues. Fans were frustrated by the extended periods spent waiting, only to be shocked by inflated prices once they reached the front of the line.
This shock quickly tuned into heightened stress caused by a checkout timer presenting people with just a handful of minutes to decide if they wanted to pay significantly higher prices for their tickets - and with it significantly higher fees charged by the ticketing company.
Failure to Manage Expectations: Without clear communication and proper management of expectations, the dynamic pricing model became a source of discontent rather than an effective tool for managing demand and increasing revenue.
These issues stemmed from a failure to follow essential procedures and protocols when implementing dynamic pricing:
Defining Objectives: Understanding the objective behind dynamic pricing is crucial. Is it to maximize revenue, manage demand, or both? In the case of the Oasis tour, it seems this objective was not clearly communicated or managed effectively.
Assessing Suitability: Dynamic pricing should be chosen only if it aligns with the goals of the event and the expectations of the audience. For high-demand events like the Oasis tour, it’s vital to work out if dynamic pricing is the right tool for the job.
Setting Base Prices and Parameters: Establishing a fair starting price and appropriate parameters for price fluctuations is essential. If the base price is set too high or the range of price changes is too extreme, it can lead to consumer shock and dissatisfaction.
Effective Communication: Transparency is key. Clear communication about how dynamic pricing works, including potential price changes and queue expectations, can prevent misunderstandings and build trust.
Terms and Conditions: Comprehensive and clear terms and conditions help set expectations and provide consumers with necessary information about pricing changes and ticket availability.
Ethical Considerations: Ensuring that pricing practices adhere to ethical standards and consumer protection rules is vital. This includes avoiding exploitative pricing strategies and ensuring that the process is fair for all customers.
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When done correctly, dynamic pricing can be a powerful tool. Imagine it like a skilled chef adjusting the seasoning of a dish based on the taste of the diners. If the chef understands their ingredients and the preferences of their guests, they can create a balanced, enjoyable meal. Similarly, dynamic pricing, when implemented with precision and care, can meet both business objectives and consumer expectations effectively.
The Oasis ticketing debacle highlights the importance of following proper procedures when using dynamic pricing. By defining clear objectives, communicating transparently, setting appropriate prices, and adhering to ethical standards, dynamic pricing can be a valuable asset rather than a source of frustration.
You would think and hope that the promoter and the ticketing company for the Oasis tour would have these procedures and protocols in place. Oasis themselves are distancing themselves from who was to blame and the promoter and the ticketing company are pointing fingers at each other. Perhaps it was all a mistake. Perhaps they all knew what was going on. I'll let you decide.
No Oasis lyrics were used in the creation of this article.
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DynamO Pricing has been named Disruptor of the Year at the 2026 Ticketing Business Awards.
In the same evening, Leon Gray, Head of Ticketing and Audience Experience at Edinburgh International Festival, received the Movers and Shakers Award.
The awards recognise leadership and innovation across the global ticketing industry. Taken together, the two wins reflect a shared approach: using pricing not only to drive revenue, but to support access, inclusion and audience development.
DynamO was built around a specific challenge in ticketing: the assumption that revenue growth and affordability are inherently at odds.
That assumption is the reframing at the core of DynamO’s approach. Pricing strategies have historically forced organisations into compromise. Increasing yield has often meant excluding price-sensitive audiences, while prioritising access has required absorbing financial risk.
Under CEO Bence Marosi’s leadership, DynamO was designed from day one to dismantle that trade-off, using dynamic pricing to support affordability, inclusion and audience growth alongside stronger financial performance.
DynamO’s results in 2025 were achieved with no up-front platform costs to clients and through an onboarding process measured in days, not months.
By removing the heavy up-front fees and long implementation timelines that have traditionally defined the category, DynamO has opened up sophisticated dynamic pricing to organisations that previously couldn’t access it, supporting long-term financial sustainability.
With a pioneering ticketing approach and dynamic pricing powered by DynamO, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 achieved its highest ticket sales percentage in over a decade, with more than 88% of all tickets sold, while deepening its commitment to inclusivity and accessibility.
The programme featured its first (sold-out) dementia-friendly concert, and the festival offered its highest-ever number of discounted tickets to D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent audience members. Half of all tickets were priced at £30 or less.
The 2025 Festival demonstrates the tangible impact a strategically implemented ticketing transformation can have, driving commercial performance while meaningfully broadening access.
This success was led by Leon Gray, Head of Ticketing and Audience Experience, whose approach positioned ticketing as a strategic tool for audience development rather than a purely transactional function. Inclusion and affordability were embedded into planning from the outset, shaping income and attendance targets and integrating concession pricing directly into revenue and capacity projections. Access was treated not as an add-on, but as a core consideration within the Festival’s financial and operational decision-making.
A central part of the transformation was the move to a new dynamic pricing platform with DynamO. As a non-profit, Edinburgh International Festival depends heavily on ticket income, but Leon was clear that price could not become a barrier for price-sensitive audiences, a balance DynamO is committed to with clients across live entertainment sectors globally.
“Ticketing is one of the most direct levers we have for opening the Festival up to new audiences, and we wanted a pricing approach that reflected that. Working with DynamO, we were able to respond to demand and protect our financial position without compromising on access. The result is the strongest sales performance in more than a decade, achieved alongside our most ambitious year yet for inclusive and affordable ticketing.” — Leon Gray, Head of Ticketing and Audience Experience, Edinburgh International Festival
DynamO enabled the Festival to respond intelligently to demand while protecting affordability, achieving its strongest ticket sales performance in over ten years.
The partnership between DynamO and Edinburgh International Festival reflects a shared view: pricing is part of a wider system that connects revenue, access and audience development, not a trade-off between them.
We’re grateful to The Ticketing Business Awards for recognising this work.
“Recognition like this matters because of what it points to. Pricing has too often been framed as a choice between revenue and audience. Our work with partners like Edinburgh International Festival shows that the choice is a false one, and we’re grateful to share this moment with a team that has demonstrated exactly that.” — Bence Marosi, CEO, DynamO Pricing
Whether you are a festival, theatre, concert hall, arts centre, museum or cultural venue, DynamO supports smarter ticket pricing for the culture sector through data-led, transparent and adaptable dynamic pricing.
If you’re interested in discovering how DynamO Pricing could help your organisation increase revenue and fill empty seats, get in touch using our contact form or email info@dynamopricing.com. We’d love to hear from you.
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Pál Danyi, Chief Research and Development (R&D) Officer at DynamO, has spent more than three decades at the intersection of artificial intelligence and pricing strategy. His career spans telecom, tourism, consulting and academia, with a PhD in artificial intelligence and tenure with leading global organisations including Ernst & Young and Magyar Telekom. This experience now forms the backbone of DynamO’s pricing engine.
He has also co-authored two books, Modern Pricing (2021) and Pricing For Strategic Managers (2025), both reflecting the central idea behind DynamO: pricing in the 21st century must be data-driven, audience-focused and ethical.
For arts organisations, theatres, festivals and live entertainment venues across the UK, this approach supports smarter ticket pricing, stronger attendance and more sustainable revenue growth.
DynamO’s pricing algorithm is a demand-based system designed for cultural events, live entertainment and venues of all sizes.
Pál explains, “Based on sales figures and 30+ other parameters, we predict the demand for events and recommend prices accordingly.”
These parameters include:
This makes DynamO a powerful dynamic pricing solution for theatres, performing arts venues, museums, festivals and cultural organisations looking to improve their ticketing performance.
“We have different algorithms for small venues under 100 seats, for medium-sized venues of 300 or 500 seats, and for large arenas and festivals,” Pál says. “Genre is also very important. The purchasing behavior of theatrical audiences is completely different to that of comedy, concert and sports audiences, for instance.”
Sports events often sell 40-50% of tickets in the final days before the event, while a West End production with a famous name attached will typically generate most sales earlier on in the sales cycle.
Seasonal effects, such as Christmas, as well as audience composition, are also factored into recommendations. The sales curve for a pantomime, for example, which goes on sale far in advance, will be very different to that of a non-seasonal production with tickets on sale much closer to the event itself.
“Our algorithm adapts to these different sales curves and can provide accurate predictions for different types of genres and different days,” he adds
As such, DynamO’s algorithm isn’t universally applied. It recognises structural differences in demand curves and adjusts recommendations accordingly. This differentiation is what separates DynamO from generic dynamic pricing tools.
“It is not a one-size-fits-all engine: it is a context-aware pricing system,” Pál summarises.
For organisations searching for dynamic pricing software for arts and culture, this context-led approach is especially valuable in sectors where organisational mission, audience development and affordability all matter.
In the early stages of DynamO’s development, most clients defined a single primary goal - usually revenue maximisation. Over time, this evolved.
Today, the algorithm supports changing and layered objectives, such as:
“The two major goals are filling seats and maximising revenue,” Pál says. “But these goals may change over time, and our algorithm can follow these changes.”
The system dynamically adjusts pricing logic as priorities shift. This is especially important for:
For new shows with low sales figures, “Of course we can drop prices, but it’s important that they don’t fall too dramatically - because the majority of the audience may come later.”
Different pricing strategies also apply depending on how quickly a venue wants to react to demand signals, and the length of a sales period.
“We have different pricing strategies depending on how fast the client wants to react,” he says. “A one-year sales period has completely different characteristics than a 30-day sales period. Our algorithm can adapt to each.”
“This goal-sensitivity allows clients to treat pricing as a strategic instrument, rather than a reactive tactic.”
We believe that pricing should strengthen audience trust - not undermine it.
An important pillar of DynamO’s system is transparency and control.
“Sometimes there are scandals in the news that certain shows have skyrocketed prices,” Pál notes, alluding to Oasis-gate. “Control is an important pillar of our approach, and we have designed various features to avoid such surges.”
For DynamO, the 'best' price prioritises both audiences and organisers, with prices both decreasing and increasing. A balanced approach is crucial to protecting this relationship.
“We help clients in their communication with audiences and customers, to help them understand how and why the prices change each day,” he adds.
With minimum and maximum price caps, and alignment with industry best practice, at DynamO ethical dynamic pricing isn’t a marketing slogan - it’s a structural commitment.
In fact, when dynamic pricing is embedded into a ticketing strategy from the outset, it can be an invaluable tool to support organisational mission.
For example, after switching to DynamO from another provider, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 achieved its highest ticket sales percentage in over a decade, with over 88% of all tickets sold - while also doubling down on its commitment to inclusivity and accessibility.
Not only did the programme feature its first (sold out) dementia-friendly concert, the festival also offered its highest ever number of discounted tickets to D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent audience members, with half of all tickets priced at £30 or less – proving that commercial viability and organisational purpose can and should work hand-in-hand.
One of the clearest demonstrations of DynamO’s robustness is its ability to aid event scaling. The algorithm supports:
“In many cases, DynamO has enabled clients to scale up a show,” Pál shares. “If a production has been successful in a 300 or 400 seat venue, we can scale it up to 2,000 seats.”
In one standout example, a stand-up comedy show expanded from a 300-seat venue to an 18,000-seat arena.
“Scaling up is something producers are typically afraid of because they consider it risky,” he says. “But using our dynamic pricing solution, it’s not a risk anymore.”
For organisers, this transforms pricing from a constraint into an enabler of growth.
This demonstrates how dynamic ticket pricing for arts organisations can support both revenue generation and cultural access - a key priority for many UK venues, events and institutions.
DynamO’s pricing engine is the product of:
“Our primary goal is always understanding our clients and fully meeting their needs,” Pál says.
“At its heart is a simple conviction: pricing should reflect demand intelligently, serve clearly defined goals, and maintain audience trust.”
That is the philosophy guiding DynamO - and the reason its algorithm continues to scale alongside its clients across culture, sports and live events.
Whether you are a theatre, festival, concert hall, arts centre, museum or cultural venue, DynamO supports smarter ticket pricing for the UK arts sector through data-led, transparent and adaptable dynamic pricing.
If you’re interested in discovering how DynamO Pricing could help your organisation increase revenue and fill empty seats, get in touch using our contact form or email info@dynamopricing.com. We’d love to hear from you.
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Through our partnership with Nuweb, DynamO is helping ticketing platforms and organisations move from insight to action faster, combining real-time pricing intelligence with the infrastructure needed to deliver updates when they matter most.
In this interview, Anthony Escott-Lawrence, Head of Product at Nuweb, talks about making dynamic pricing practical, scalable and effective for modern ticketing platforms.
Nuweb describes itself as “the engine behind ticketing platforms”, providing the infrastructure that powers ticketing businesses behind the scenes. From inventory and pricing to payments and integrations, its platform is built to help partners scale under their own brand.
That makes Nuweb a natural partner for DynamO. As Anthony explains, “DynamO Pricing fits into this through the ecosystem we’ve built around our platform. As a systems integrator, we enable ticketing platforms to select the tools that best meet their needs and connect seamlessly with us.”
DynamO provides the insight, and actioning it at scale is made quick and easy with Nuweb, helping platforms respond to demand in real time.
Anthony’s view is that pricing strategy is only valuable if systems allow teams to execute it seamlessly.
“Pricing intelligence is only as good as its execution,” he says. “You can have the smartest algorithms in the world, but if your ticketing system can’t actually apply those decisions, it doesn’t really matter.”
That is where the Nuweb x DynamO partnership becomes really powerful. DynamO delivers demand signals, market benchmarks and pricing recommendations, while the integration with Nuweb ensures platforms can apply those decisions at scale and without friction.
For Anthony, this is where many older systems fall short. “A lot of legacy systems weren’t built for this,” he says. Modern ticketing infrastructure, by contrast, needs to support pricing that moves responsively with demand, without waiting for human intervention, as part of the live sales process.
Anthony is clear that dynamic pricing is already familiar to consumers. “You see it in airlines, hotels, ride-sharing - pricing moves with demand,” he says. “Live events aren’t really any different, but a lot of platforms just haven’t had the tools to respond in real time.”
That gap between ambition and capability is exactly what the partnership is designed to close.
Historically, one of the biggest barriers to dynamic pricing has been the cost and complexity of implementation. Anthony sees the Nuweb x DynamO partnership as a way of lowering that barrier for ticketing platforms that want to modernise without high upfront payment.
“There’s no heavy upfront investment with DynamO,” he says, “and when you combine that with our infrastructure, it opens things up to platforms that might not have been able to justify it before.”
Dynamic pricing shouldn’t be limited to just the largest operators with extensive in-house resources. With the right infrastructure in place, more platforms can access the tools they need to respond to demand more intelligently.
“If someone has to log in and change prices by hand, you’re already behind the demand curve,” Anthony explains.
The future, in his view, is automation supported by real-time data. That means systems that can respond as demand changes, learn continuously and support better decisions over time.
For organisations looking to future-proof pricing, Anthony’s advice is simple: focus on clean real-time data, choose open infrastructure and start experimenting.
“Ultimately, the organisations that do this well are the ones treating pricing as something they continuously develop - not just something you set once and forget.”
That is what the Nuweb x DynamO partnership is helping to deliver: a more connected approach to ticketing, where pricing intelligence is not just available, but actionable.
If you’re interested in finding out how a partnership with DynamO could help your organisation increase revenue and fill empty seats, get in touch using our contact form or email info@dynamopricing.com. We’d love to hear from you.
