Ticketek Facing Extended Outage: 'Do We Just Turn Up And Hope For The Best?'

Punters are stressing and promoters are shifting sales platforms as Australia’s largest ticketer, Ticketek faces an extended outage.

Attendees are unable to access tickets for everything from arena concerts to Bluey shows while pre-sales for artists including Jack White and Róisín Murphy were moved from yesterday to today and subsequently have been moved from the platform.

Due to the “ongoing issues”, Frontier Touring has this morning moved ticketing agencies for today’s pre-sale for Jack White’s December Melbourne and Sydney shows. Tickets to those shows will now be sold via AXS and TicketSearch.

In a statement to The Music, a spokesperson for Frontier said:

Frontier Touring became aware the Ticketek website went into 'maintenance' in the early hours of yesterday for security reasons (Mon 18 Nov). As a result, we postponed yesterday's planned presale for Sydney and Melbourne shows by US rocker Jack White. As of this morning the Ticketek site is still not able to sell tickets so the rescheduled Jack White presale has been moved to alternative ticketing agencies AXS (Melb) and TicketSearch (Syd). We are also cancelling today’s presale for Roisin Murphy, moving the onsale for Alexisonfire and presales for Ado. Fans should check frontiertouring.com and our socials for ongoing updates.

The Music has approached Ticketek to confirm the nature of the issues.

While maintenance is usual for ticketing websites, Ticketek has been reportedly down for two days with punters reporting the inability to access new purchases and accessing digital wallets to open their already-purchased tickets.

The Ticketek website has displayed that it is “currently undergoing maintenance.” According to the website's message, the update is “taking longer than anticipated,” and users may experience “temporary disruptions.”

The message concludes with informing punters that the Ticketek team is working hard to complete the update and to check the website later.

Multiple industry sources have told The Music that they believe the “maintenance” may be related to a larger issue.

On the Ticketek Reddit, punters have been expressing disappointment and panic as they can’t access the website or app ahead of arena shows by pop group twenty one pilots and country star Kane Brown.

“It’s still down! I have a show tonight and can’t access the tickets as it’s on my account. App is also down. Any ideas how to access a ticket if everything is down? Wtf,” one punter wrote.

They’re not alone, with numerous ticketholders expressing concern on Ticketek’s Facebook page.

“We are all very concerned about our tickets, especially us that have concerts tonight and tomorrow night,” a punter wrote. “Do we just turn up to Rod Laver Arena and hope for the best?”

Ahead of twenty one pilots’ show at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena tonight, a fan wrote, “What about the people who are going to twenty one pilots tonight? Our tickets are still locked. So many people can’t access their tickets at all. It’s been over a day now since the website has been down. Like wtf.”

A concertgoer asked about Kane Brown’s show at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena tonight: “Will the site be fixed in time for the Kane Brown concert tomorrow night?”

While fans are understandably stressed, communities have banded together to give one another advice about accessing tickets while Ticketek is down.

A punter advised fellow fans that they could access their tickets by going to a laptop or computer, finding their original ticket confirmation email, clicking on the link in that email, and opening the ticket. Then, the punter encouraged fellow ticketholders to print or take a photo of the ticket in the link.

On mobile, fans noticed that if they held down the link to “Important Ticket Access Information” in their original ticket confirmation email, they’d receive a preview of the ticket, which would be enough for staff to work with.

Users on X (formerly known as Twitter) also commented that they’d directly called the box office at venues they were going to attend last night. They reported that staff told them they had a list of names and would let concertgoers into the venue.

ANOTHER UPDATE !!

security said if you can pull up your confirmation email with proof you are ga you will be able to get in at doors if ticketek is still not up https://t.co/gnPgZKHd1d

— ren TODAY (@redeccrate) November 18, 2024

I rang the box office in my city about the ticketek issue and she said she has a list of everyone’s names and that i just have to say my first+last name and they’ll let us in

— grace ♡ ❯❯❯❯ (@gypsylwt) November 18, 2024

This story updates.