An event featuring Manchester United soccer coach Sir Alex Ferguson went awry because the sports ticketing software only allowed fans to buy one ticket each. Here's a look at what happened and how to avoid having the issue occur at your event.
It seems there is high demand for ticket to meet famous sports figures on both sides of the Atlantic. That become obvious earlier this month when tickets to see Sir Alex Ferguson in-person went on sale as he promotes his autobiography.
For the non-sports fan, Alex Ferguson is a former manager of the legendary Manchester United soccer team. His time at the club led to Ferguson being regarded as one of the most admired and respected managers in the history of the game. Now retired, Ferguson is a best-selling author, and his autobiography Managing My Life is widely read by both soccer fans and business executives.
The demand for tickets to Ferguson's personal appearance event brought the sports ticketing software to its knees minutes after the sale started and eventually sold out. The sell out wasn't a smooth experience for soccer fans as MSN Sports explains:
The ticketing company has been forced to apologize after its website left Manchester United fans frustrated this morning. Tickets for the evening, which will be hosted by Eamonn Holmes, went on sale on Eason’s website for $50 each at 10am this morning. However, many expressed their disappointment after having difficulties getting onto the site while others rued the fact that it was only allowing them to buy one ticket.
The limit of just one ticket didn't match what it is clearly stated on the sports ticketing software company's website ("Ticket limit of 2 Per Person"). Even with the slow responding website and one ticket limit, the event sold out after just 17 minutes. Eason apologized for the technical issue but not before fans took to Twitter to express their disappointment.
Given the huge demand to see Alex Ferguson speak of his experience as the coach of the most popular sports team in soccer history, one may assume that extra server capacity was added before the sale. It has yet to be determined if the high server load caused the glitch in the ticketing system, or if a last minute change to the ticket purchase policy was erroneously implemented. If the high demand was the cause, it means that the ticket outlet wasn't making use of the latest in cloud computing technology.
One of the things cloud computing does best is expand to meet high demand. When there is a spike in demand for your event, ticketing software that runs on a cloud platform will add more computing power (“automated scaling”) ensuring your buyers a smooth purchase process. Even better, once the high demand has been satisfied, cloud based ticketing software will then contract to normal capacity - which saves the ticket outlet money.
Cloud computing helps us serve your needs in a highly reliable and cost effective way, which helps you do the same for your ticket buyers. Cloud computing also trickles down to your individual sales agents and third party promoters by letting them sign-in to their account from anywhere. Since ThunderTix is in the cloud and always on, so too is authorized access to your account by the people you officially designate. You can add users to your ThunderTix “cloud account” as you see fit, be they temporary staff, ticket sales agents or remote third parties.
Cloud computing is also what enables other ThunderTix features like embed codes to make your tickets available for purchase on websites other than your own, and it powers our Event Restricted Access. Display your events with our event calendar HTML, events listing or events date search.
Want to place your brick and mortar box office in the cloud and be always on with a high availability and confidence? Just give us a call and you can harness the power of cloud computing to sell more tickets from your website or any other website on the Internet – and save money too!
