Industry News

FC Cincinnati’s ticketing platform crashes after high demand for semi-final match against NY Red Bulls

Major League Soccer (MLS) club FC Cincinnati’s platform crashed Tuesday after tickets went on sale for the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup semi-final match against the New York Red Bulls.

The ticketing website has since rebooted with passes for next week’s game still available. The MLS team tweeted last night (Tuesday) that it was back online, but cautioned fans that “there’s no guarantee the site will remain up.”

The Glitnir Ticketing system crashed yesterday shortly after 1pm. By 8.30pm when the site was back up and running, the whole upper bowls at Nippert Stadium, as well as the lower sections, were almost full to capacity.

Secondary resale market StubHub already has tickets listed for the game, however, very few are marked at below $50 (£39/€43).

FC Cincinnati last week revealed that it had sold 10,000 tickets in a pre-sale to season ticket holders, or about a third of the stadium’s capacity.

“We began taking preparatory measures with Glitnir (ticketing system) following our win against Miami FC, knowing there would be large demand once the public sale was launched,” FC Cincinnati president and general manager Jeff Berding said in a team news release.

“Unfortunately, their system has gone down and we have not been able to facilitate orders since shortly after 1pm today (Tuesday).”

StubHub and local ticket broker Riverfront Choice Tickets feature listings for the New York match with the later listing prices starting at $95.

Image: RickDikeman