Last week was a huge moment in music – Oasis announced a series of North American concerts to be held in August and September of 2025. Their previously announced UK and Ireland shows sold out in a matter of minutes with a ton of issues surrounding demand and pricing. But Oasis were also far bigger in their native England than they were in the US, so how would the handful of North American shows fare?

Before tickets officially went on sale on Friday, October 4^th, the band announced second shows for all North American dates, except one – the Chicago show at Soldier Field would remain a lone date. Lucky me, as I would be trying to secure tickets for that very show.

I did get a pre-sale code that would let me buy tickets on Thursday, a day before the general sale. I figured I’d take a shot at seeing them, I never had despite having lived in Europe through the late ’90’s and having every opportunity to see them whenever I wanted.

There are a few other things I’ve never done – I’ve never been to a stadium concert and I’ve never bought a ticket for a high-demand event. I think the 20,000 capacity amphitheater style gig is the biggest type I’ve been to, and none of those shows were sell-outs. I’ve been to several sold-out or near sold-out shows, but all of those were smaller, club-level shows at 1,000 or less capacity. I’ve never had a problem getting tickets to something even if it was a hot ticket.

But this Oasis reunion is a HOT ticket. Again, it melted down Ticketmaster in England due to demand. Many people over there were left out, which also served to increase North American demand as many from England would be trying their luck with shows across the pond.

I’ve bought tickets at box offices and record stores back in the days of paper tickets, I’ve obviously boguht online a lot in the past many years, and I’ve showed up to many shows and simply paid at the door without an advanced ticket. One thing I’ve never done is use an online queue system like what Ticketmaster had set up for these shows.

I got home on Thursday from work about fifteen minutes before the pre-sale began. I logged into my Ticketmaster account and, in what proved to be a grave mistake, I waited until the sale launched to join in. Had I jumped in right when I got home, there might have been a different outcome to this story.

When I got into the queue, there were 16,800 people ahead of me. I was a bit miffed that I was so far back, but then I hopped on reddit to see what people were saying and I found out I messed up by not joining as soon as I could.

I don’t know the exact number of tickets available – Soldier Field concerts seem to run around 54,000 or so. The number of people in the queue, who could each buy 4 tickets, far exceeded the capacity. Take into account that not all tickets were sold during the pre-sale and pickings were truly slim.

Anyway, I waited 40 minutes to get in and when I did, it was a bloodbath. There were a few scattered seats, but I couldn’t get one quick enough. The GA floor only had VIP available, and it quickly came down to only having VIP seats as well, at a $600 minimum. I simply closed my browser tab and went about my day.

I did not bother trying for the general sale the next day. I believe Chicago sold out in 19 minutes, and all of the other gigs (with two shows on all the others) sold in similar fashion. I saw that quite a few people got in on the Mexico City gigs after missing on both the UK and other North America shows. I guess up next is Australia, who are getting a whole two shows.

No, I won’t be seeing Oasis next year, barring some kind of oddball luck on the resale market. I’m not inclined to pay much attention to that, honestly. I’m not really upset about it, I knew it would be kind of a lottery to get tickets and I just didn’t hit. Besides, I’ve heard from plenty of people that stadium shows kind of suck anyway, it’s more about just being there than it is taking in the show. I’ll make do with the inevitable live album and documentary when all of that comes around.