The pre-sale for tickets to Cricket Australia’s Summer of Cricket, including the highly anticipated Ashes series between Australia and England, has been plagued by technical problems, forcing fans nationwide to endure long queues — some multiple times.
Cricket Australia’s priority pre-sale launched Tuesday morning via Ticketek AU, with ticket release staggered from 10am to 4pm AEST depending on venue, to manage expected high demand. However, sales were grouped by state rather than match type or format. For example, all Queensland games, including the day-night Ashes match, went on sale at 11am, covering five stadiums across the state.
Many fans faced hours-long wait times only to be abruptly booted back to the end of the queue. Complaints flooded social media, with some users reporting being pushed from queue positions around 20,000 to over 190,000.
Pre-sale access holders received unique passwords, but this did not grant priority in the queue, with all users placed in the same waiting line.
Ticket sales started with Men’s and Women’s T20 and ODI matches against India in Canberra and Hobart, followed by games in Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory, Victoria, New South Wales, and Western Australia throughout the day. In total, 26 fixtures were made available for pre-sale.
Many expressed frustration that Ashes tickets were not sold separately, complicating the buying process.
User Complaints and Website Issues
Additional issues included limits on selecting only one ticket at a time and failed transactions after entering payment details. This contradicted Cricket Australia’s pre-sale emails promising up to nine tickets per match day could be purchased, advising groups needing more to have multiple people register separately.
Fans vented their frustrations on social media, describing the experience as “one of the most frustrating” they’d faced, especially after investing in travel and accommodation.
Ticketek and Cricket Australia Respond
Ticketek stated the sales ran smoothly despite unprecedented demand. They acknowledged some fans would inevitably miss out due to limited ticket availability.
Cricket Australia announced it sold over 220,000 tickets on the first day — nearly doubling its previous single-day record of 111,741 tickets sold in 2017/18, which was broken within five hours this year.
CEO Todd Greenberg urged fans yet to buy tickets to act quickly before allocations run out. General public ticket sales are set to begin on June 13, with some tickets still available via pre-sale.
Battling Ticket Scalping and Bots
Ticket scalping — where tickets are bulk-bought and resold at inflated prices — has surged since last year, often blocking genuine buyers from purchasing.
Ticketek noted over one million fans flooded their site last year during major music tours, with bots posing a significant challenge.
Their ticketing system is designed to detect and block bots, warning users against using multiple browsers, which may trigger anti-bot measures and affect their place in the queue.
