Sports fans across the US faced huge queues and concerns that they would miss games last night (Thursday) as Ticketmaster admitted a “significant outage” in its mobile app.
Problems were reported at NFL preseason games in Atlanta and Kansas City, as well as Sun Devils Stadium at Arizona State University, and at the US Open tennis tournament in New York City.
Officials at Kansas City Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium confirmed that Ticketmaster was having “technical difficulties”, and said fans at the stadium “should visit the ticket office for assistance and refunds, if they paid at the gate for tickets they already paid for through Ticketmaster.”
Fans were unable to access their tickets via the app, although those that had taken screenshots were not affected.
Ticketmaster eventually said the issue had been resolved at close to midnight east coast time.
In a statement, Ticketmaster said: “Ticketmaster is presently experiencing a significant outage impacting access to fan accounts at sporting events.
“We are working diligently to resolve this issue and will provide updates as they become available. If you are a Ticketmaster ticket holder experiencing problems at an event please go to the box office.”
The problem with mobile entry is particularly significant as sports teams increasingly move away from paper tickets. However, while reduced costs and seemingly improved security are positives, the technology has to ensure that it is reliable.
ESPN reporter Darren Rovell tweeted: “Teams say they are going mobile to prevent fraud. What happened tonight with Ticketmaster outage affected 50X more than will ever be frauded.”
IMAGE: Christopher Seward (Twitter)
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