There were scenes of absolute chaos outside the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney’s Olympic Park on Wednesday after the Ticketek app crashed just as thousands of Dua Lipa fans arrived for her concert.
The system failure meant people had no way to prove they had an online ticket because it wouldn’t appear on the app.
Fans were left stranded outside in long queues as security tried to manually check their tickets via confirmation emails instead. Which obviously went about as well as you’d expect it to — imagine if you got your ticket off a mate or on marketplace and didn’t have the OG email.
Folks took to Twitter to vent their frustrations, with some expressing concern that they wouldn’t get into the venue in time for the start of Dua Lipa’s concert.
This is disgusting. @Ticketek_AU has gone down and thousands of people can’t get in to see @DUALIPA pic.twitter.com/j7cRrzVP1F
— DW (@danieloverheard) November 9, 2022
Waiting to see @DUALIPA and @Ticketek_AU system is down…. Let’s see if we make it in! pic.twitter.com/UA1fqTeaFS
— alexdownie (@alexdownie19) November 9, 2022
Massive @Ticketek_AU outage for the second night of the @DUALIPA concert. Box office has to print individual tickets LOL pic.twitter.com/bYdxWMiAJ0
— ath-in-a (@athinamallis) November 9, 2022
Some called for refunds, while others slammed the site for not making the print at home option available for all tickets.
Trying to get into my @Ticketek_AU account and it’s not working, so I’ve come to twitter to see what’s going on and people can’t even get into the Dua Lipa concert right now…Why not just make the print at home option available?
— brontë (@brontevsworld3) November 9, 2022
Ticketek said the issue was resolved by 8.30pm, which is when the concert was meant to kick off. Some fans were reportedly still outside at 9pm, shortly before the concert actually started.
I was there and it was ridiculous. As per the usual the security were rude, people were furious. The person on the microphone sounded ridiculous and no one gave information on what was going on. It was a terrible experience. @Ticketek_AU #DuaLipa @DUALIPA
— ***Captain 🐨Air*** Fully vaxxed 💉 (@baqsyd18) November 9, 2022
@Ticketek_AU What a shitshow!#DuaLipa #ticketek pic.twitter.com/yCBLfPS4WQ
— Andrew Shannon (@andrewcshannon) November 9, 2022
Dua Lipa appeared on stage a little after 9pm and apologised to fans for the delays.
“Ticketek apologises to fans impacted by the issue,” Ticketek said in a statement to PEDESTRIAN.TV.
The company said the crash was caused by “a connection issue between two systems”.
