"Dynamic pricing"

Ay up, our kid... are we the baddies?

"Industries like airlines and Uber do it already" 

Yes, and it sucks when they do it. Plus, they don't advertise one price and then increase it during the queuing process.

"It's not Ticketmaster who set the prices, it's the bands"

You're telling me the bands would have had this idea themselves if those guys hadn't invented it? Or that, when presented with the option of making more money, you would find it easy to decline?

"Noel and Liam have forgotten their working class roots"

They've not been working class for a long time, guys. Trying to paint either Gallagher as a saint this late in the game seems rather silly.

"It's just capitalism, stupid"

I'm no expert, but I would suggest that for capitalism to function it can't just be about the pure, untrammelled pursuit of profit. It's mostly about that, sure. But the last financial crash wasn't an inevitable consequence of capitalism; it was a failure of regulation. Checks and balances exist for a reason. We have laws to prevent monopolies, cartels and suchlike. Most people don't mind paying for stuff, as long as prices are affordable and fair.

Ticketmaster and co's major problem is that we all remember how things used to be. Tickets had a face value price. You chose to pay it or not. If you were really desperate, you'd choose to pay an inflated sum to some dodgy geezer outside the venue on the night. We all knew that was touting, and it was illegal, but sometimes needs must.

Now look. Stubhub. Viagogo. Actual established websites whose sole USP is to resell tickets at over face value. Some, maybe all, of these sites are owned by the same people who own the primary sites. By some accounts, said primary sites sell large tranches of tickets directly to said resale sites. By any definition, this is legalised touting. Everybody hides behind the "it's just capitalism, stupid" defence. But when some third party steps into a supply chain and jacks up the price, they're usually adding some kind of value. Ticket resellers are literally adding nothing but pure profit.

There are obvious fairer solutions. Glastonbury requires you to show your photo ID on entry. A ballot system would eliminate scenarios like Saturday's absurd bunfight, where millions of people wasted their weekend mornings in queues, and queues for queues, only to be told the remaining tickets were "in demand" and therefore triple the advertised price, even though they were surely "in demand" at 9am when all your fucking servers were crashing because of the high demand. 

A ballot would require more planning on the organiser's part, is one counter-argument. To which I would respond, have you seen the price of the tickets these guys are selling? Pay attention. They're making shitloads of cash. They won't do it because it wouldn't allow them to pull shit like dynamic pricing.

Ah, but the gigs have all sold out. So people *will* pay these prices. It's markets. Something something supply and demand! Some people paid for the exorbitant tickets. Judging from the general uproar, I'm guessing many, many more people refused to. 

Add this to the "admin fees" scandal, which are at least a couple of quid per ticket even for emailing you an e-ticket, and 21st century ticketing has become a total shitshow. People know this is not fair. They're pissed off. Something needs to change. For the new Government, regulating these wild behemoths would be a very easy win.