The agony and the ecstasy of trying to secure tickets to see your favourite band is, by now, a badge of honour for emotionally and financially bruised and battered music fans. And the release of tickets for each click-again, try-and-fail supergig seems to only be getting more and more painful.
So the story goes for Ticketmaster’s release of Coldplay tickets which went live this morning at 9am UK and have caused fury among fans clamouring to snap up tickets globally, including the Hull and record-breaking Wembley Stadium gigs from August 18th through to September 8th next year.
The band – as suspected – added two more dates to the Wembley run during yesterday’s pre-sale, bringing the total number of Wembley gigs to ten, setting a new record for the 90,000 seater soundstage.
However, following systems failing to deliver the goods for Taylor Swift’s Eras gigs earlier this year and then the highly-unpopular dynamic pricing implemented by the Oasis team for their 2025 gigs, Coldplay have become the next big names to place Ticketmaster’s failures in the frame.
The latest Ticketmaster turkey happened this morning as pre-registered fans piled on to seal the deal. However, rather than successfully part with cash, many fans were hit with a requirement to change their password or authenticate their account one more time – something requiring Ticketmaster to email out unique codes to check addresses. Emails and codes which were not forthcoming… Meanwhile tickets dripped away in their thousands.
“Ticketmaster saying I need a code to verify my account and then just not sending the code??? make it make SENSE #coldplay,” being just one of hundreds of similar outpourings on X.
ticketmaster saying I need a code to verify my account and then just not sending the code??? make it make SENSE #coldplay pic.twitter.com/sxB7Y7XNSNSeptember 27, 2024
Most annoying for fans who didn’t qualify for yesterday’s presale event was the fact that even once through the re-checks, the presale had apparently left only a limited number of tickets available for general sale on the official launch date.
“They’ve sold most during pre-sale limited tickets already #Coldplay'; 'would be good to know why all ticket types are already extremely limited 2 mins before general sale has even started #coldplay #ticketmaster' complained a typical fan on X.
“Tell me how this works then? Waited nearly 3 hours from sale being live to “queue” to be told there’s none left. Your system is an absolute con!” wrote another.
Meanwhile it appears that more organised ‘scalpers’ haven’t missed a moment to cash in on their good fortune, with hundreds of tickets – ranging from £400 to £700 – hitting ticket resale sites StubHub and Viagogo within minutes.
The move has prompted some to take to social media, sharing movies of the tickets now on sale elsewhere, and demanding that these tickets be cancelled so that ‘real fans’ can have a chance of buying them.
“Screw you scalpers. There's a special seat in hell for you,” being just one of a storm of similar protests.
Petition for all these #Coldplay tickets to be cancelled and put back on the market for actual fans to have.Screw you scalpers. There's a special seat in hell for you.[AD: Videos of StubHub and Viagogo selling tickets for extortionate prices] pic.twitter.com/dD6a2ASyglSeptember 26, 2024
All in all yet another launch disaster for Ticketmaster, and not a good look for squeaky clean Coldplay.
That said, things could be worse. Following their bungled sale of Oasis tickets – where Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing system automatically raised the price of tickets in line with how popular they were proving – the company is now facing an investigation from the Competition and Markets Authority.
The watchdog said that fans: “May not have been given clear information about ticket prices as they struggled to snap up tickets for the Oasis Live '25 tour earlier this month.” The CMA will be ascertaining as to whether fans were unfairly pressured to snap up tickets in a short time, prompting them to pay higher prices than they may have originally planned.
