Eurovision 2023 tickets for Liverpool sell out in just over 30 mins despite Ticketmaster crashing

Eurovision sees musical acts from across Europe come together to perform for votes at home, but this year’s song contest has also seen fans unite to blast Ticketmaster as the site crashes once again. 

Tickets went on sale for the 2023 Eurovision’s nine live shows at midday on 7 March, and sold out in just over 30 minutes of being live; however numerous fans were left empty-handed after Ticketmaster displayed multiple errors and kicked people out of the queue.

People flocked to Twitter to share screenshots of the ticket site crashing and to share their annoyance at the lack of reliability for the website. 

One fan said, “Absolute joke and a shambles of a company,” while another said, “I was 113 in the queue, but then got kicked out and couldn't rejoin before tickets sold out. What do you have to say about that? Your site was pathetic at midday with all the error messages, and then worse with the queue issue. Were you even prepared for the obvious busy traffic?”

Following the sale for Eurovision, Ticketmaster UK put out a Tweet to suggest customers who were left without tickets could keep an eye on the fan-to-fan site, but this was not met with a warm reception as users highlighted the unfairness of the solution and commented on the expected substantial price increase.

“Good old Viagogo are flogging them for £11,000 a ticket? Shameful,” said one as another commented, “fan-to-fan resale where they’ll be 500% their original price. As expected from you lot.”Initial ticket prices ranged from £30 to £290 for the semi-finals and £80 to £380 for the grand final, all taking place at the M&S Bank Arena, on the Queen's Dock.

However, the fans’ annoyance should not come as a shock to some, as Ticketmaster has crashed more than once recently due to large volumes of people.

The Live Nation Entertainment-owned website faced controversy after it crashed during presale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and oversold the amount of tickets to bots leading them to cancel their general sale, before failing again for Beyoncé's first tour in five years.

Some Swiftie's reactions were so large that they sued Ticketmaster for fraud and triggered a US Senate investigation into the site.

When is the 2023 Eurovision competition?

Eurovision heads to Liverpool's M&S Bank Arena from 9 -14 May 2023 after Ukraine won last year's competition, but are unable to host due to the Russian invasion.

Graham Norton and Alesha Dixon are set to host the song contest with Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham appearing as another host.

Veteran Eurovision commentator Graham said: "Every year that I'm involved it's a huge honour, this year is even more special and I personally feel a big responsibility to make our Ukrainian colleagues proud."