I pay £361 to park in my local park.

After six hours of battling with Ticketmaster, including several hours of waiting in line, I had about 90 seconds to put a price on my love for Oasis.

By 2.30pm on Saturday, all £135 standing tickets for the Manchester concert on 20 July next year had been sold. The only ones left were “in-demand standing” tickets, which – given the £337.50 price tag – I naively assumed would at least give you a better view.

Ten seconds. Nine seconds. Eight. There was no time to discuss or ask friends if they could afford such a large expense. Did I choose principle or pleasure?

My bank’s overdraft warning this morning reminded me that I had chosen the latter: £1,423.55 for four tickets with a ‘requested status’, of which £73.55 is a service charge and processing fee.

The total, including insurance, came to a stomach-churning £361.13 per ticket. That’s the same price as Glastonbury festival and more expensive than four nights in Sharm El Sheikh. Was it worth the aggravation?

All the excitement was quickly dampened by the sheer financial cost. We had talked beforehand about how much we could afford to pay to see the band we had loved as kids (although, let’s be honest, the last few times we saw them – in 2008 and 2009 – they were disappointing).

We agreed that £250 for hospitality tickets was just about right. These were the most expensive tickets when prices were announced last week; the first fans heard about the “in-demand standing” ticket when they got to the box office.

The fact that Oasis were playing so close by – I live less than a mile from Heaton Park – added to the emotional charge. I couldn’t miss it.

Ticketmaster relies on this emotional response to get people to pay such exorbitant prices. And after waiting in line for six hours—and being kicked out multiple times for “bot-like” behavior, despite only having one tab open—the impulse to buy is overwhelming.

About 10,000 people per hour dropped out of my line on Saturday afternoon, having bought something, been discounted or given up. By 1:12 p.m., 34,000 were ahead of me. A little over an hour later, it was my turn to buy.

Stan Collymore, the former footballer, compared this “buzz of entering the buying phase” to the same dopamine rush experienced by gamblers. He added: “At that stage, a price increase from £150 to £400 is no longer a choice, it’s an impulse buy. An unethical/should be illegal business practice.”

With every rush comes a crash. The feeling that many fans will have today is that they are being exploited – not just by Ticketmaster, but, worse still, by the artist and his management, who agree in advance to the implementation of this system of “dynamic pricing”.

When we choose pleasure over principle, we feel complicit in what feels like a supersonic scam.