The Ticketmaster website temporarily crashed after a surge of users attempted to purchase presale tickets for Olivia Rodrigo's "GUTS" tour.
The company has yet to explain the reason behind the crashing website during the latest presale but some suggested that some brokers might have populated the servers and the Virtual Waiting Room.
(Photo : Jason Kempin/Getty Images for ABA)
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Ticketmaster Crashes Amid 'GUTS' Tour Presale
Rodrigo recently announced two new shows in Los Angeles, causing a huge demand among her fans. Ticketmaster prepared a Virtual Meeting Room for fans who will purchase the ticket to avoid overloading the site during presale.
The Virtual Meeting Room is a system launched by the company to give an equal chance to fans to buy tickets. Fans are only able to enter the lottery system only once to avoid purchasing abuse.
However, several fans complained that people were unable to join even the waiting room. Other fans who were able to queue failed to get tickets despite waiting for over an hour.
Ticket Brokers Suspected Cause of Ticketmaster Crash
Despite Rodrigo's huge following of fans, some suggested that ticket brokers must have bombarded Ticketmaster's servers causing it to crash during the presale. Ticket brokers utilized specialized web browsers wherein each tab has its own IP address.
This technique allowed brokers to enter and queue as many as possible from a single computer. Most of the time these brokers take advantage of the ticket selling for popular artists, allowing them to hoard tickets and sell them for a more expensive price.
"The Browser makes up a new computer number for each Tab you use, and then you buy IPs from Overseas, so each window has a different IP. It's worse than it ever has been for fans," said Ken Lawson, a former ticket broker on Ticketmaster and is now an advocate against it.
Still, some fans got lucky in purchasing their desired tickets on time while some fans might have to wait for the general sale.
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