Ticketmaster, the popular ticket sales and distribution company, does occasionally go down for maintenance and technical issues. While disruptive for customers trying to purchase tickets, routine maintenance downtime is necessary for any major website or app to function optimally.
How often does Ticketmaster go down?
Ticketmaster likely performs routine maintenance on their systems a few times per month or quarter. However, the maintenance window is typically late at night or early morning when traffic is lowest. So most customers may never notice if brief maintenance downtime occurs.
More significant outages that impact ticket sales during peak hours are rarer, but do happen from time to time. In the past year, Ticketmaster has experienced a few major outages, including:
- In November 2022, Ticketmaster was down for several hours during a presale event for Taylor Swift’s new tour. The outage prevented many fans from purchasing tickets.
- In July 2022, Ticketmaster experienced an outage that lasted around an hour during busy sales for various concerts and events.
- In May 2022, Ticketmaster had multiple periodic outages over several days that disrupted ticket sales for various shows and festivals.
So major issues seem to occur approximately once every 2-3 months on average. But most maintenance downtime likely happens without notice.
What causes Ticketmaster outages?
When Ticketmaster experiences major technical issues, what’s usually to blame? Here are some of the most common causes of significant outages:
1. System capacity issues
The most frequent cause of Ticketmaster outages is overwhelming demand exceeding website and app capacity. Major onsales like Taylor Swift tours bring huge spikes in traffic. If systems aren’t scaled properly, the surge in users can cripple Ticketmaster functionality.
2. Networking/CDN failures
To maintain fast performance, Ticketmaster relies on content delivery networks (CDNs) and networking partners. But if those external services fail, it can cut off Ticketmaster’s ability to handle user traffic smoothly.
3. Back-end problems
Issues with Ticketmaster’s core ticketing systems can also bring things down. Complex back-end software like ticket inventory and sales platforms may have bugs that cause glitches.
4. Cascading failures
Often smaller technical issues can compound, causing cascading failures. If an outage is mismanaged, problems spread across different systems. What starts as a minor hiccup spirals into a major incident.
5. DDoS attacks
Malicious actors may also sometimes use DDoS attacks to overwhelm Ticketmaster with junk traffic and force it offline. While not the most common cause, distributed denial-of-service attacks do occasionally disrupt service.
How does Ticketmaster fix outages?
When Ticketmaster experiences a major outage, its engineers follow an emergency response plan to identify the issue and restore service. Steps typically include:
- Pinpoint the root cause – Analyze health metrics and logs to diagnose the core problem.
- Stop the bleeding – Isolate failures to prevent cascading issues and stabilize the systems.
- Bring up backups – Fail over to backup systems and redundancy mechanisms.
- Communicate status – Update customers about the outage through social media, support pages, etc.
- Resolve the problem – Fix coding errors, deploy extra capacity, thwart attacks, etc.
- Monitor recovery – Watch health dashboards to ensure systems are operating normally again.
- Run postmortem – Document lessons learned from the outage to improve prevention in the future.
Through urgent troubleshooting, Ticketmaster engineers attempt to get ticket sales back online as quickly as possible. But major outages can sometimes last hours if problems prove complex.
Does Ticketmaster maintenance cause refunds or compensation?
Legally, Ticketmaster is under no obligation to provide refunds or other compensation when routine maintenance causes brief service interruptions or downtime. Their terms of service grants them leeway to conduct standard technical work that may disable services temporarily.
However, for longer major outages that prevent ticket purchases for hours or days, Ticketmaster will sometimes issue the following compensation to affected customers:
- Refunds – Money back for tickets unable to be purchased during the outage.
- Credit – Percentage credits toward future Ticketmaster purchases.
- Tickets – Released tickets to future events when high demand caused sell-outs.
This compensation is determined on a case-by-case basis depending on the scale of the outage. Customers may need to contact Ticketmaster customer service to request refunds after an incident.
How can customers check for Ticketmaster maintenance?
To stay aware of any Ticketmaster maintenance windows or outages, customers should check the following places for status updates:
- Ticketmaster system status page – They list current identified issues and maintenance schedules.
- Ticketmaster Twitter account – Important real-time outage notifications are posted here.
- Ticketmaster customer service – Calling their support line may provide details on ongoing maintenance.
- Ticketmaster subreddit – The community here often posts about service interruptions.
Monitoring these sources provides visibility into upcoming maintenance as well as unplanned outages. Alerts from Ticketmaster directly via email or mobile push notifications can also inform customers of issues.
How can customers prepare for Ticketmaster maintenance?
To avoid being impacted by Ticketmaster technical issues, customers can take the following steps to prepare:
- Know maintenance windows – Bookmark their status page and check it before major onsales.
- Have account set up – Ensure your Ticketmaster account and payment info is created beforehand.
- Use desktop over mobile – Desktop websites may handle traffic better during peak demand.
- Try staggered presales – Take advantage of fan club or venue presales before the main rush.
- Have backup payment methods – A backup credit card or PayPal can help if one fails.
- Use client support channels – Direct messaging with Ticketmaster often gets faster responses.
- Follow up on issues – Keep contacting support and providing error details until resolved.
With the right preparation, customers can minimize hassles from both routine and unplanned Ticketmaster outages when acquiring event tickets.
Conclusions
In summary:
- Ticketmaster performs maintenance about once per month, usually during low traffic periods.
- Significant outages happen a few times per year due to issues like insufficient capacity.
- During outages, Ticketmaster works urgently to diagnose and fix the problem.
- Customers may receive refunds or credits if maintenance causes major disruptions.
- Checking system status pages and social media allows customers to stay aware of maintenance schedules and issues.
- Proper preparation like having ticket accounts set up ahead of time can smooth the ticket buying process during maintenance periods.
Though inconvenient when they happen, periodic outages and maintenance downtime are necessary evils to keep complex systems like Ticketmaster running optimally. Staying informed and having backup plans helps customers roll with the punches when technical problems strike.
