Music fans have reported problems securing tickets to the One Love Manchester concert on Sunday in honour of the victims of last week’s terrorist attack.
Tickets to Ariana Grande’s star-studded benefit gig went on sale at 10am this morning and sold out within six minutes, leaving many fans disappointed.
Many shared their frustration online and claimed that the Ticketmaster website had crashed due to the high demand.
One Twitter user, Charlotte, wrote: “I’m so upset that I haven’t got one love tickets my friend died at this concert and I was going for them @Ticketmaster.” Thomas Locke added: “@TicketmasterUK is DOWN after @ArianaGrande tickets go on sale for #OneLoveManchester concert!” Nick Barnes added: “I was in the queue from 9:36am on Ticketmaster and when I got through at 10:01 it said no tickets available.”
Last Monday, 22 people died and 116 were injured in a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena. Grande — who organised the benefit gig, enlisting the help of her celebrity friends as a tribute to her fans — will play alongside Coldplay, Take That, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber.
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Those who attended the star’s original concert had been offered free tickets, with the remainder on sale to the general public priced at £40.
Some concertgoers who bought their tickets for Grande’s original show from secondary ticketing sites were initially told they would not be eligible for free tickets to One Love Manchester. But those websites subsequently made efforts to ensure that tickets are offered to the people who actually went to the original gig, rather than those who originally purchased the tickets.
Fans who were at last Monday’s concert had until 10pm on Wednesday to register for free tickets for the benefit gig.The application included a section where fans could say they bought their original tickets from a secondary site.
A Ticketmaster spokeswoman insisted the website had not crashed and said: “Ticketmaster was unsurprisingly met with remarkable demand for One Love Manchester tickets we had on sale this morning – 140,000 fans were on the website and our call centre was buzzing.
“With over 450,000 searches on our site for One Love Manchester over the last 24 hours, demand was always going to be extremely high. We are happy to report that there are thousands of fans who sucessfully purchased tickets during the general onsale.
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“We understand that there are a number of fans who didn’t receive an email this morning with regards to free tickets for One Love Manchester. We worked through the night and verified thousands of original bookings although there were some we could not verify. We want to give all fans who were at the show, regardless of where they bought their tickets, every opportunity to register for One Love Manchester, so we have opened up the registration again today, until 2pm.
“To help us verify that fans were at the show, they must register on this link https://manchester_benefit.ontouraccess.com/ and provide their booking reference and information about where they bought their ticket, including the venue box office, or primary and secondary ticketing websites.
“We would like to reassure any fans that were at the show, that they will receive a free ticket for One Love Manchester, provided we can verify their initial booking. We thank fans for their patience as we continue to process the registrations.”
The One Love Manchester concert will take place at the Emirates Old Trafford stadium. Fans have been asked not to bring bags to avoid delays going through security. More than £6 million has been raised so far for the We Love Manchester emergency fund.
Of the 16 people originally held following the attack carried out by Salman Abedi, 22, on May 22, ten remain in custody for questioning following a series of raids across the country.
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It came as Greater Manchester Police said Abedi had bought most of the key component parts of the suicide bomb in the few days before the attack.