AFL Aussie rules football fans have lashed out at Ticketek after complaining of an arduous buying experience while attempting to secure tickets for next week’s qualifying final between Geelong and Richmond.
Tickets went on sale at 9am yesterday (Tuesday), but as many struggled to secure a seat and continued getting kicked out of the online queue they began expressing their anger on Twitter. The mood did not improve when it was announced the game had sold out.
One fan, Simon Julian said: “@Ticketek_AU I’m trying to get tickets to the footy finals. Is your system having a meltdown? #stressed”
Another, Heath Littlefield, said: “Ticketek site is useless. What is going on??? We live in 2017 for gods sake and site keeps freezing/crashing.”
Ticketek’s managing director Cameron Hoy said on Tuesday: “Today’s on sale for the AFL Finals Series Week One has seen record demand and record sales for the Ticketek platform.
“We covered all four matches for AFL Club members and the General Public at the MCG, SCG and Adelaide Oval and transacted over 85,000 tickets in the first hour alone.
“The Ticketek platform performed to our high expectations and provided continuous online transactions for many thousands of footy fans.
“As with every major event onsale Ticketek deploys a virtual queue to ensure fair access to tickets.
“While we understand this can cause frustration and can lead people venting on social media, the experience today for the overwhelming majority of fans has been excellent and we note that many posted positive comments on social media.”
By midmorning, fans became more exasperated when seeing Ticketmaster’s resale site flogging tickets for up to A$343, with the cheapest tickets being sold for A$136.85.
The Richmond game against Geelong will be held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on Friday September 8.
The AFL finals are an eight-team championship playoff tournament held over four weeks. The teams in the 2017 finals are Adelaide, Geelong, Richmond, Greater Western Sydney, Port Adelaide, Sydney, Essendon and West Coast.
Image: Paul Coster
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