- Ticketmaster hit by ‘global outage’
- F1 fans cannot buy tickets
Ticketmaster has been heavily criticized by F1 fans who were told at the last minute that ticket sales for the 2025 Australian Grand Prix have been postponed.
Tickets for the Melbourne event were scheduled to go on sale at noon on Tuesday.
Some fans had been in the waiting room since 11 a.m. to hear that the sale would be postponed until Wednesday.
Ticketmaster has attributed the outage to a ‘global third party disruption’ and has apologized along with the organizers of the Australian Grand Prix.
“Due to a global third party disruption, the general public sale of the 2025 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix will be postponed until 12pm AEDT tomorrow Wednesday, October 9,” it said.
‘We apologize for any inconvenience caused.’
Fans were furious and none the wiser about the delay.
‘What do they mean by third-party failure? Is it a website problem or something else?’ said one.
Ticketmaster was criticized after F1 fans were unable to buy tickets for the Australian Grand Prix
‘Did you only discover this at 12:10? Not at 11am when you said the waiting room was open? Just happy to leave people frustrated for 70 minutes?’ wrote one disgruntled fan.
“Maybe useful to know before we wasted our time getting tickets!” another added.
The Australian Grand Prix will be held in Melbourne from March 13 to 16 next year.
The cost of a ticket has skyrocketed, with the cheapest non-seated option setting fans back as much as $169. It represents a $20 increase over the price charged this year.
Australian Grand Prix CEO Travis Auld defended the price increase.
“What we have tried to do year after year is limit the increase in the base price, but the reality is that the cost of organizing a Formula 1 event is increasing.
“We’re seeing unprecedented demand and we need to try to balance that with keeping the event as accessible as possible and we’ve had a lot of conversations about that.
‘People have different views on that, but that is certainly the intention.’