‘Kicked out of queue’ - Eurovision fans left frustated as ticket demand crashes site

Eurovision fans have been left frustrated after Ticketmaster crashed during the rush to buy tickets for May’s Song Contest in Liverpool.

The tickets went live at midday, but fans who began queueing online from 11am were greeted with error messages and kicked to the back of the line as the website experienced outages.

Eager fans have taken to social media to share their fury. one said: “Seems like I’m not the only one facing a 500 Internal Server Error when aiming for #Eurovision tickets. Godspeed to all tho!”

Disappointed fans took to social media to share their experiences. One woman posted: “Waiting 20 min beforehand for it to crash and now 2000+ ahead of me in the waiting room!”

Another frustrated fan added: “Seems like I’m not the only one facing a 500 Internal Server Error when aiming for Eurovision tickets. Godspeed to all tho!”

Nine ticketed shows in Liverpool

Liverpool is hosting the song contest on behalf of last year’s winners, Ukraine, as well as a huge cultural festival. The Grand Final took place in the M&S Bank Arena on Saturday May 13, with semi-finals on Tuesday 9 and Thursday 11, and there were nine ticketed shows, including six previews, available to purchase.

The UK Government will also make around 3,000 tickets available for displaced Ukrainians who were forced to flee their home country, with the subsidised tickets costing £20.

Tickets were released on Ticketmaster at 12:00 pm on Tuesday and people across the world faced huge queues. Fans needed to be registered before making a purchase, and could only purchase tickets for one show at a time. There was also a limit of up to four tickets in a single order for the live shows and six in a single order for the preview performances.

Eurovision fans left frustrated

Despite planning well in advance of the ticket sale, some fans were left disappointed. “All I get is error 500 and nothing loads. Ticketmaster just can’t handle vast quantity of sales,” one bemoaned.

Several Facebook users shared pictures of messages in a Eurovision fan group, stating they joined the queue in advance but then the page crashed and showed an error message. Others said they could not get into the waiting room at all, despite joining the Tickermaster ‘lobby’ an hour in advance.

Another man said: “Got to 20th in the queue and the site kicked me out.” And, a disappointed woman shared an image of an error message which read ‘your place in the queue is no longer valid’ despite her finally getting to number one.

Good news for some

However, it’s not all disappointment as one man shared that he managed to get tickets to the final preview show, within three minutes of tickets going on sale. After 12:25, several users began sharing their success in securing preview tickets, for prices between £160 and £280.

What to do if you did not get tickets

If you were not able to purchase tickets but still want to celebrate the huge song contest in the host city, there will be a huge range of activities and watching parties across Liverpool.

A huge cultural festival will take place prior to the Grand Final and venues such as the Philharmonic, Mersey Ferries, Einstein and many more have released details of watching parties.