Beyonce and Jay-Z fans (particularly the notorious fan army of “Beyhive” denizens) are riled up after Wednesday’s presale for the upcoming On The Run II Tour saw major system collapses, costing some fans prime seats when the lights went out.
Tickets for members of the Beyhive fan club were up for presale starting at 9:00 A.M., and things went downhill quickly. “How can all the Beyonce tickets be scooped up by 9:01? I thought we were trying to combat bots. @Ticketmaster,” wrote Leah Weiser on Twitter.
Other fans were feeling similar experiences, compiled by hollywoodlife.com (and several other media outlets):
Other members of the Beyhive reported that the Ticketmaster website crashed when they tried to buy! “I logged on at 9:00 AM to order OTR II tickets with my Beyhive code and the site crashed. It should have been prepared for this,” one unimpressed fan wrote. “Despite only a few european dates being up for presale today, OTRII is causing Ticketmaster to crash, good luck to everyone trying to get tickets!” a fan site tweeted.
Scores of fans were quick to blame “bots” for snatching up the seats, but while that fits the narrative Ticketmaster and tour promoters tend to push whenever their system can’t handle massive demand spikes, there’s no transparency to know how many tickets were even available to members of her fan club (or the Tidal service, which also had presale codes for members on Wednesday). There are also Citibank credit card presales, so who had access to how many tickets via what channel is anybody’s guess, since Live Nation et al fight like tooth and nail to keep that kind of data behind the curtain to protect their ability to mete out tickets at whatever rate suits their sales goals (or public relations efforts blaming the secondary market despite their being one of the primary players in it.)
How many fans had an experience like “Tori” from New Brunswick, Canada, who reports that a site crash cost her front row seats that were wiped out by a website crash?
I just had FRONT ROW beyonce tickets in my cart. I filled in my information and credit card. I was overjoyed. I beat the clock. I clicked complete… and got this error. #ticketmaster #beyonce
Now it’s sold out and I will never recover. pic.twitter.com/8V5M70r7Xm— Tori (@no_tori_ous506) March 14, 2018
We’ll never know.
What we do know is that a vendor handling a high profile sale for a high profile tour just kicked a hornets nest with its performance, and history shows what kind of wrath that can entail.
(note: SNL sketch, not actual documentary footage)
