Ashes ticket hopefuls hit by glitches as Cricket Australia boast record sales
Ticketing platform Ticketek has been forced to soft-pedal reports of major issues as fans try to access tickets to this winter’s Ashes series between England and Australia.
Cricket Australia said on Tuesday that they were enjoying record ticket sales for the next edition of the long-standing cricket rivalry, where England and Australia fight for the famous Ashes urn.
The pre-sale window, however, saw several complaints from fans bemoaning a reported computer glitch which sent them to the back of a 180,000-strong queue.
England will look to win their first overseas Ashes series since 2011 across five Tests Down Under this winter.
They’ll begin in November in Perth before a day-night Test at Brisbane’s Gabba – set to be knocked down ahead of the 2032 Olympic Games.
The two sides will then take each other on in Adelaide before the famous Boxing Day match at the MCG.
The potential series decider will be in January at the SCG in Sydney.
Ashes ticket chaos
If every one of the 25 Test match days was sold out, over 1.5m tickets would have been shipped by Cricket Australia.
“Was just in the queue at 20,000 and stuffed out and now I’m 195,000,” one social media comment said, while another added, “I sat there for 2 hours, bought the tickets and then it put me back in a queue of 200,000.”
The demand on the ticketing site was partly put down to a mass release of events by Cricket Australia, 26 in total across multiple formats of the game.
“An unprecedented first day of ticket sales,” Cricket Australia said, adding that they have “officially recorded their highest individual day of ticket sales, surpassing the previous record of 111,741 (2017-2018 pre-sale).”
The governing body insisted that “plenty” of tickets remained available to fans at pre-sale pricing amid concerns fans could have missed out.