The CEO of ShowClix, the full-service ticketing system that is in charge of selling tickets for New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)‘s concert series, headlined by Kraftwerk, the popular German electronic music group, has issued an apology after many ticket buyers were unable to purchase tickets due to an overload of the company’s server.
Joshua Dziabiak, CEO of ShowClix, said in statement to ticket buyers that the problem was “a single setting within one of the lower levels of our [ShowClix] queuing system’s middleware bubbled-up under the heavy load and caused frequent timeouts.” The glitch in the server also led to a problem with the communication system that allows ShowClix representatives to instant message buyers while they are in queue.
The Kraftwerk concert series will be held April 14-16 at the MoMA. According to the MoMA website, the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium that is hosting the event has a reception capacity of 700. While TicketNews was unable to reach ShowClix for comment on the number of tickets available for the performances, Dziabiak explains that there were tickets for only 1.2 percent of the tens of thousands of fans who were trying to purchase tickets.
While some fans were able to get through to purchase tickets, most ticket buyers were faced with either a webpage displaying a spinning wheel or a blank page. ShowClix posted on their Twitter halfway through the on-sale, saying that there were 50,000 simultaneous connections.
While major ticket companies, such as Ticketmaster, are known for having shows that sell out in minutes, in the event that tickets are limited or unavailable, buyers are brought to a webpage that prompts them to either change the number of tickets or to choose another section if possible.
ShowClix issued a statement on their website one hour prior to the scheduled on-sale, warning buyers that the tickets were expected to sell out in minutes — they actually sold out in one hour, but many ticket buyers were left in the dark.
Typically, on-sale dates only apply to a single performance or to shows in different states. Tickets to the eight Kraftwerk performances were put on sale at the same time with many ticket buyers likely attempting to simultaneously purchase tickets to several of the shows despite the two-ticket limit per person for the entire series. According to the MoMA website, each show features a live performance and 3-D visualization of one of Kraftwerk’s eight albums.
ShowClix explained that none of their other clients were affected by the glitch. In the future, the company plans to recommend to their clients that tickets to events with a high demand and small venue capacity not be released all at one time.
While many tickets to the shows are being sold on Craigslist.com, the event’s page on the MoMA’s website explains that tickets will be distributed only via will-call and that pickup will require buyers to show their IDs.
