by bernd » Mon Sep 22, 2014 10:15 am
Earlier Than You Think I had the honor of working for eVenue.net in 2005 and got a first hand look at how the real online ticketing works. My clients included many MLB and College Sports venues, such as USC and the SD Padres. We also worked with several thousand small theatres and Dover racing events. The "typical" time you can expect tickets to go onsale is around 10am. However, to keep the servers from overloading, users are typically able to get in queue up to an hour or two earlier. The user will actually sit on the event page with an active "session"; most-likely clicking the "Buy Now" every few minutes or so(every few seconds or so minutes before the "onsale" begins). Once the queue hits a certain capacity, new users will be guided to the same page on a different web server, one not tied to the software or commerce engine, but one or two that can handle several thousand online users at once. The event owner will make the call as to whether or not to start the onsale early. If they do, "early" typically means about 10-15 minutes and ONLY affects the people on the commerce server. This early tactic helps flush out the queue of users hogging the web server by clicking every 20 seconds. So when the flood gates open at 10am, there's a slightly less chance of the web server crashing(and about 1/8th of the inventory gone). "Early" for a POP Concert can be an hour(FYI). My advice to get the best tickets is to go as far as you can on the website about an hour early. Leave the "dead-end" page open and go run errans or whatever for 45 minutes. Come back at 9:45am and start clicking "Buy Now" every 60 seconds(so 15 clicks). Good Luck! seoexpert 86 months ago Please sign in to give a compliment. Please verify your account to give a compliment. Please sign in to send a message. Please verify your account to send a message.