This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Live Business
Ticketmaster takes the heat during unprecedented demand for Adele tickets Stateside
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 21 December 2015
I often think, the main reason for using Ticketmaster to sell your tickets is that they are already the music brand everyone loves to hate, so if and when things go wrong – because there’s too much demand for tickets, or there’s a screw up on individual transactions, or people don’t like a promoter’s pricing – the Live Nation subsidiary soaks up all the consumer rage, and the promoter, venue and artist walk away with their reps untarnished.
Last week, Ticketmaster took the heat as Adele tickets went on sale in the US. This time it was the ticketing firm’s own servers that were the problem, though they only struggled because demand was so fucking high.
According to Billboard’s sources, over ten million fans went online to try and buy one of the 750,000 tickets available, with four million New Yorkers reportedly online at the same time doing the refresh dance in a bid to secure a ticket or two. Bloody Adele, not satisfied with breaking all those album sales records, now she’s insisting on breaking all the ticketing records too. Leave at least something for someone else Adkins.
Aware that fans were venting loudly on social media about Ticketmaster’s lethargic and crashing website (the firm denies it ever crashed), the company’s President for North America, Jared Smith, sent a memo to staff telling them they’d all done very well indeed, despite the unprecedented demand causing servers to wobble.
In the memo, published by Billboard, Smith writes: “I know it must be frustrating to read that we crashed during Adele’s onsale and that fans are upset with us because they couldn’t get tickets. I want you all to know that [Live Nation CEO] Michael [Rapino] and I, and more importantly our partners, know just how well the systems (and you all) performed yesterday. Thanks to your efforts – even with what I’m told was easily an all-time record of ten million+ fans rushing to our site – we delivered a good experience for as many fans as possible”.
Confirming the official excuse for the wobbles, he went on: “Unfortunately, when there is such a exceptional artist with unprecedented demand against short supply, there are inevitably going to be disappointed fans”.
The good news is that Team Ticketmaster are presumably used to being at the receiving end of consumer-hate, so they’ll just let the Adele-fan-rage wash over them and get on with their jobs. Well done one and all.
