“Oasis Live ’25” might have been the hottest ticket of last year, but nearly as intense was the frenzy to buy the reunion tour’s merchandise.
The mammoth merch campaign around the band’s first tour in 16 years — orchestrated by Warner Music Group’s WMX division — has finally wrapped up, following a review between WMX and Oasis’ management teams. The campaign encompassed 39 stadiums worldwide (excluding Japan, where WMX does not have Oasis merch rights), with a total capacity of 2.57 million people. Over 150 different product styles were sold across the gigs and at 19 specially commissioned “fan stores,” which appeared in 17 cities across 10 countries, and traded for the equivalent of 362 days across the world.
Those stores were established in tour destination cities in the weeks running up to the shows (and, in some cases, for months afterwards) and were characterized by huge lines, with many fans spotted emerging with bagfuls of “Live ‘25” swag. It was a similar story at the gigs themselves, with Variety witnessing some fans dropping hundreds of dollars at merch stands, while much of the crowd was dressed head-to-toe in either tour clothing or the signature Adidas “Original Forever” collaboration, or sometimes a combination of the two. Multiple items on the group’s website are long since sold out.
“The U.K., Ireland and other parts of the world were under the grip of a mania, the likes of which we hadn’t seen since the Beatles, some might say,” declares WMX’s Bob Workman, reference presumably intentional. “There’s something about the Oasis logo and iconography that means fans are proud to wear it, in the way that Iron Maiden and Metallica fans are proud to wear merch to their shows. So, there was this sense that fans would want to buy products before the gigs so that they could wear it to the shows, and we could provide an outlet for their fandom.”
Chicago (Photo by Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
The campaign was so successful that the fan stores in London and Dublin stayed open until Christmas, while the campaign continued to do brisk online business long after the tour wrapped in Sao Paulo, Brazil in late November.
Sales figures remain a closely guarded secret by the band’s notoriously tight-lipped management teams, but a merchandising expert not connected with the tour told Variety that the average merch spend at Oasis’ U.K. tour would likely have been £12-£15 ($16-$21) per head. That means each of the band’s seven Wembley Stadium shows, with a capacity of 81,000, would have generated between £972,000 ($1.3 million) and £1.22m ($1.62m), before hall fees and other deductions. U.S. merch sales would likely have been at a similar level, although some markets, notably those in Latin America, tend to average significantly less.
Additional sales at the fan stores are harder to estimate, given the relative infancy of the concept and the unprecedented length of time the Oasis shops were kept open, but there have been unverified anecdotal reports of the London store taking as much as £220,000 ($293,000) in a single day.
Certainly, Oasis merch was cited as a key driver of soaring revenues at both Warner Music Group and Adidas. In its Q4 figures, WMG said a 64.3% year-on-year increase in revenues in its artist services and expanded-rights segment (up from $199 million to $327 million at constant currency rates) was “primarily due to higher merchandising revenue for the Company’s partnership with Oasis and higher concert promotion revenue.” Adidas, meanwhile, cited the Oasis collaboration as one factor behind a 12% rise in “lifestyle revenues” for the brand in 2025, and “double-digit growth” for its Originals brand.
“We had a squad of people who were very ambitious for the project very early on, maybe even pushing the management team and Oasis in terms of our ambition, particularly around the fan stores,” says Workman. “I’d really like to think that we’ve shown the industry that there is another level you can go to.”
First though, WMX had to win the account. Workman quips that the process resembled being “a spy.” After an initial approach from UROK’s Sam Eldridge — who, as Liam Gallagher’s manager alongside his father, Roy Eldritch, and Liam’s partner, Debbie Gwyther, had worked extensively with WMX — there was a clandestine meeting in the closed restaurant of a hotel, before the tour was even announced in late August 2024. (Noel Gallagher is managed by Ignition.)
“It was competitive, although the way it was handled was very discreet, so it wasn’t some big fight by any means,” says Workman.
Workman and WMX VP Paul Ellis then took the proposal to Warner’s senior leadership team, including WMX head Karl Walsh, then-Warner Music U.K. boss Tony Harlow and WMG CEO Robert Kyncl, who Workman says “understood what a big moment this would be culturally.”
“We’re a small business within a big company and, at the time, I don’t think merchandise was at the top of the agenda for the board or the global leadership team,” he adds. “We brought an ambitious project that required investment and a good deal of buy-in from the top levels of the business — and, fortunately, everyone felt the excitement that we did.”
The fan store strategy was developed well in advance of the reunion in order, according to Ellis, to “match the enormous sense of anticipation that accompanied the tour announcement.”
Mexico City (Photo by Carl de Souza/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
Ellis says WMX worked with the band and management to “visualize” the stores and the products sold within them, leveraging the extended leases on the sites to “land some exciting brand collaborations and a broader range of products than you would usually expect to see at a tour merchandise stand.”
While the band have collabs with everyone from lighter manufacturers Zippo to drinks bottle firm Chilly’s, and WMX worked with photographers Jill Furmanovsky, Michael Spencer Jones and Simon Emmett, the Adidas partnership proved a particularly huge draw at both the fan stores and Adidas’ own retail network — and even at the venue merch stands, despite branded merch usually being considered too expensive to sell to gig-goers. The success helped take both band and brand to a younger demographic than those who consumed their original work together in the ‘90s.
“Adidas must have had a wonderful time,” says Workman. “That relationship’s been there for 30 years, it’s not new, but it was a completely new execution and brilliant in its simplicity. The visual recall is so instant with Adidas and Oasis — we were very fortunate to have that to play with.
“We were very particular about making sure we had garments that would appeal to kids who like skateboards and streetwear, as much as people who were around in the ‘90s and love guitar bands,” he adds. “We certainly made sure that we had enough styles to appeal to a broad age group. A lot of parents have done an amazing job of being disciples for Oasis — and the younger generation really embraced it.”
Even the ensuing huge queues at stores became a plus point for the campaign, according to Workman, who says they “became part of the story of the summer” as fans posted on social media and even forged friendships in the long lines. And yet, the huge advance sales did not seem to negatively impact merch business at the actual gigs, with different products stocked at each location.
“You could argue that one might cannibalize the other but, actually, it all held up really well,” says Workman. “We tended to [look at] the return on a particular city rather than the fan store or stadium. The fandom is extraordinary.”
And, with the campaign finally over, Workman and Ellis can turn to absorbing the lessons learned into their work with other artists.
“It will become the blueprint for how we work at WMX and Warner Music going forward,” declares Ellis. “We learned so much along the way: We took a brand lens and approach to this project, from the product strategy, retail environments, PR and marketing, content and so on. By thinking big and working with the right partners, we were able to execute a global vision, built with a fans-first mindset.”
Manchester (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
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Workman, meanwhile, has been fielding calls from other artists and management companies interesting in staging similarly high-profile merch campaigns.
“Oasis were a huge catalyst for growth and change in our business,” says Workman. “It was an important moment for people to say, ‘OK, so Warner are taking merchandise seriously, this isn’t just some sideshow to the bigger recorded-music play.’ The notion of signing the artists’ merch rights and being part of that from the start is much more front-and-center than it was. And that’s so important: if you’re in the superfan business, you’ve got to be in the merch business.”
Workman says the Oasis fan store effect even boosted other, year-round businesses in the same areas, claiming that outlets such as the official Rolling Stones store in Carnaby Street, London and Amoeba Records in Los Angeles enjoyed huge boosts to footfall and sales when the Oasis shops opened nearby. But, despite that, they are resisting the temptation to open a permanent bricks-and-mortar Oasis store.
“One could make a case for it, but I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do, to be honest,” says Workman. “There will always be something online but, in terms of a physical store, it’s probably healthy for it to go away and then come back again. It’s important for artists to be missed and create a build-up of demand and interest.”
Quite when — or if — Oasis themselves will be back remains the subject of intense speculation, with rumors persisting that the band might return to the road, or at least to England’s Knebworth Park, scene of some legendary 1996 gigs, in 2027. Noel Gallagher wasn’t giving anything away when he picked up his Songwriter of the Year award at the recent BRIT Awards, and Workman claims not to be in the loop this time around, but the WMX exec says the company would love to be involved again if anything does happen.
“There’s been lots of hints and misinformation floating around, so we’ll have to see,” he says. “We’d love to continue working with them but, for now, we’re in a wrap-up phase. Who knows what will follow in the future?”
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