Ticketek has downplayed reports of widespread problems with its online sales platform from cricket fans trying to buy tickets to the Ashes, saying multiple browsers can trigger bot protection services designed to protect customers.
On Tuesday evening, Cricket Australia announced it had recorded its highest individual day of ticket sales ever. But the hours before saw a chorus of frustrated fans venting at the online queue for the tickets’ presale window, which opened in the afternoon.
The men’s Ashes series against England begins in November in Perth. Tickets to all five tests across Australia were on sale during the presale window.
Several people claimed that as they neared the front of the digital queue, after waiting for hours, they lost their place due to a computer glitch – and that when they were able to rejoin the queue, more than 180,000 people were ahead of them.
Others claimed their tickets “timed out” while they were checking out.
A Ticketek spokesperson told the Guardian that “the demand for Cricket Australia’s Summer of Cricket today has sold at an unprecedented rate, all without issue”.
“We recognise that when we have high-demand events with limited inventory that some fans will miss out and will be disappointed,” they said.
“We encourage all customers not to use multiple browsers when trying to access tickets. Our systems are designed to prevent and block access from bots, and customers attempting to access the site with multiple browsers may be flagged by our bot prevention service,” the spokesperson said.
Despite Ticketek’s claim that customers’ ejection from the queue was related to them having multiple tabs or browsers opened logged in with their presale details, some customers reportedly faced this issue despite only having one tab open.
More than 160,000 tickets had been sold to the tests in the other four cities before tickets to the Perth test even went on sale, Cricket Australia said in its statement. The sales broke the previous record of 111,741 tickets sold in an individual day, in the 2017-18 series presale window.
Cricket Australia’s CEO, Todd Greenberg, said: “to surpass our previous ticket sales record even before NSW and WA tickets had gone on sale is a remarkable achievement”.
“I would urge those who haven’t already bought their tickets to do so now as we expect allocations to be exhausted for some days.”
