Oasis, the reunion explained with Lundini and Ferrario's parody
The world tour in the crosshairs of the UK antitrust authorities starts in Cardiff. When fan romance feeds the least romantic of businesses
4' min read
4' min read
This is it. Wrap up your St George's flag, slip on your Manchester City jersey, slap on your fisherman's cap and ski goggles: the long-awaited reunion of Oasis starts now, from the two dates in Cardiff on 4 and 5 July. The Oasis Live '25 tour, which was initially only supposed to be British, then - observing the now ritual litany of progressive announcements - became a bit Canadian, American, Mexican, Korean, Japanese, Australian, Argentinian, Chilean and Brazilian, will keep us company from now until November 2025. But watch out for extra time, which, when Manchester City is at stake, is always to be reckoned with. And, when you least expect it, this exclusive tour is likely to find it on your doorstep.
We could say many things about the 'knife brothers' Noel and Liam Gallagher getting back together after 16 years, since that backstage fight in Paris in 2009, use a thousand adjectives, were it not for the fact that a thousand and one have already been used. We could give the numbers: the 41 dates spanning four continents, the 900,000 tickets sold in a year (here at home, there are those who have quietly sold a million and are not even shy about it), the 60 million cachet and the 400 million potential induced revenue. We could throw in the gossip, with the £20 million that Noel owes his ex-wife in divorce settlement, which would make even the most principled man make peace with his worst enemy, or return once again to the controversy.
Here, too, there is something for everyone. The British antitrust authority, the CMA, has, for example, put Ticketmaster in its crosshairs for its dynamic pricing of tickets, the automatic mechanism that raises the price of tickets as demand increases and availability decreases. According to the investigation opened a year ago, Ticketmaster may have violated the UK Consumer Protection Act by selling 'platinum' tickets at almost 2.5 times the standard price, without explaining to the public that they did not carry any additional benefit. And since the ticketing platform allegedly failed to provide satisfactory answers, it is not ruled out at this point that the CMA could drag it into court.
We could talk about the phantom 'duration' of the reunion concerts which, as per the previews, opens with Hello and closes with Champagne Supernova for an hour, 23 songs for a couple of hours total duration, but you know that the highlights of the greatest British band from 1994 to 1997 more or less are. So much for those who would have paid up to £2,500 to go.
We could say everything and the opposite of everything, if it were not that, in this torrid Italian summer of controversy about cancelled tours and fake sold out shows, two comedians, Valerio Lundini and Edoardo Ferrario, have said the final word. In In & Out, the new Sky format, they respectively impersonate Noel and Liam Gallagher engaged in phantom remote conference calls to prepare for the reunion. Various humanity is in it - managers, promoters, press offices, social media editors, the Fabi, the Milene, the Pamele - and all the vices of the contemporary music business.
