Ticketek’s site crashes leaving thousands of Ed Sheeran fans unable to buy first $70 tickets

Fans of wildly popular UK crooner Ed Sheeran flooded the Ticketek website to buy tickets to his upcoming Australian tour during the pre-sale event.

But tickets sold out within hours and reappeared almost immediately on unofficial reseller sites with huge markups in an attempt to profit from desperate concert-goers.

Scalpers have advertised tickets for Sheeran’s 2018 Divide tour online for up to $1000 each, despite Ticketek selling the most expensive tickets for only $160.

Resale website Viagogo now has hundreds of tickets listed for exorbitant prices for concert dates in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide.

One scalper is attempting to sell two tickets for the Sydney show on March 16 next year for $1,917.31 and are the very last tickets in the section.

Ticketek has priced the Sheeran tickets between $70.16 and $161.90 but it appears thousands of those flooding the site were buying only with the intention to resell at a profit.

Devoted fans spent hours refreshing the website to get their hands on the coveted Sheeran tickets but were left disappointed at the lengthy wait times and site crashes.

The website has apologised to fans for the crash and long waiting period, but stressed it has no control over the prices of tickets that are resold on unofficial sites.

Ticketek Australia’s Twitter page became swamped with angry users asking why the website had crashed and slammed the ticket seller for allowing scalpers to buy during the presale.

‘Why can’t I get Ed Sheeran tickets from your site but there are tickets on multiple scalper sites?’ one angry fan asked.

‘Ticketek site finally works, most allocation is exhausted… rest is single seat for Ed Sheeran in Brisbane. Disappointed trying since 1pm,’ another wrote.

Another fan wrote: ‘Waited all day for Ed Sheeran tickets only to have single seating. There goes my wedding present for @jacobirvine. Thanks a lot Ticketek.’

A flustered Twitter rep for Ticketek Australia simply responded to the hoard of furious Tweets with ‘keep trying’.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Ticketek Australia for comment.

Ed Sheeran’s extreme popularity in Australia is not a recent occurrence – fans trying to buy tickets to his 2015 Australia and New Zealand tour also ran into trouble buying them online and scalpers enjoyed similar profits.

Tickets will be on sale again to the general public on May 23 at 2pm for Brisbane, 3pm for Sydney and Melbourne and 3:30pm for Adelaide.

Source: Ed Sheeran fans furious as Ticketek’s site crashes | Daily Mail Online