High-demand event launches are a sensitive moment. Huge surges in relative demand can easily overwhelm sales platforms, leading to frustrated fans and negative press coverage. Probably the most famous example dates to 2022, when Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour first went on sale. Ticketmaster received 3.5 billion requests in a single day, causing widespread system failures that made headlines worldwide. Similar events occurred before the 2024 Oasis reunion, and this is by no means a problem confined to the big leagues. Sites accustomed to stable request volumes regularly crash when relative demand surges, and the Taylor Swift fiasco plays out countless times on a smaller scale across the ticketing industry.
Website crashes during peak demand
Statistics published by Queue∙it paint a sobering picture for ticketing businesses:
- 91% of enterprises report downtime costs exceeding £240,000 per hour
- 53% of IT decision makers think their company will experience an outage so severe it makes national media headlines
When your ticketing system crashes during a major sale, the consequences extend beyond immediate lost revenue. Brand reputations are damaged, something which takes years to rebuild and will push clients towards competitors. This loss of competitive advantage also means legitimate ticketing sites lose business to their rivals, but also to touts and resale sites.
Bots, touts, and bad actors
Estimates of the total impact on the industry of touts and mass buying by ticket bots vary significantly, but there is no denying this is a major problem. With a single bot capable of buying 1,000 tickets a minute, bot activity is responsible for a large portion of downtime and lost sales. Given markups on ticket resale sites can reach over 1000%, this is a hugely profitable business, and automated ticket bots are increasingly sophisticated.
Using bots to mass buy tickets is inherently unfair:
- Humans cannot respond as quickly as automated bots, and so lose out on tickets
- Site infrastructure can be overwhelmed by very high request volumes
- Prices and availability are artificially distorted, sometimes by ticket holding without completing the purchase
Server capacity, server scaling, and site protection
When bots (or sometimes genuine customers) overwhelm a site, there are multiple points of failure. Web servers get saturated from the number of requests, cart updates, and checkouts. Databases struggle to respond to the spike in demand for inventory checks or user profile information. Finally, payment processing systems cannot cope with the volume of false or unfulfilled orders from high-speed, automated bots. All of these eventually lead to site crashes.
Many businesses attempt to solve peak traffic problems by scaling their server infrastructure. However, this approach simply doesn’t work in many cases.
- Scaling server capacity just to deal with spikes is cost inefficient. The additional infrastructure will sit idle when no surges are ongoing.
- Bot-driven sales spikes are often so vast they cannot be dealt with by any reasonable server infrastructure. The 3.5 billion requests sent to Ticketmaster for Taylor Swift are a prime example.
- Payment infrastructure is more complicated to scale than web servers or databases, and often results in a bottleneck.
Simple bot detection methods
Any regular web user will have noticed CAPTCHAs getting harder over the last few years. The reason is simple: basic CAPTCHA systems and rate limiting provide minimal protection against sophisticated ticket bots. Compared to earlier versions, newer automated ticket buying systems use convincing IP addresses, use AI to solve CAPTCHAs, and mimic human browsing patterns. This makes the classic methods for blocking unwanted, automated traffic obsolete.
Virtual waiting rooms
CAPTCHA improvements are stuck in an arms race with rapidly improving bots. An alternative solution is to use virtual waiting rooms. A virtual waiting room acts as a protective buffer when demand spikes, sparing your ticketing infrastructure from unexpected surges.
How do virtual waiting rooms work?
When demand exceeds your system’s capacity, the excess visitors are redirected to a branded waiting room using HTTP 302 redirects. They are given a queue position and estimated wait time, which ensures customers can access the site on a first come, first serve basis, even during traffic spikes. After they reach the front of the queue, users are admitted to the site at a rate that allows your servers to cope with the traffic, preventing payment systems or other critical site infrastructure from being overwhelmed. The virtual waiting room also provides an opportunity for enhanced bot mitigation, with detection algorithms that identify and block malicious traffic before it can access your site.
Benefits of virtual waiting rooms
Prevent revenue loss
- Waiting rooms enable businesses to use server capacity efficiently
- Maintain system stability during peak demand periods
- Ensure payment gateways remain functional throughout the sale
Improve customer experiences
- 76% of customers report sales are less stressful with virtual waiting rooms
- Transparent wait times reduce customer frustration
- Branded waiting rooms maintain engagement during delays
Block Bot Traffic
- Advanced bot detection prevents automated purchases before they impact legitimate users
- Live raffle randomisation removes bots’ speed advantages
- Custom traffic rules allow sophisticated access control
Reduce support burden
- 69% reduction in customer complaints during protected sales
- Clear communication reduces confusion and support tickets
- Automated systems handle traffic management without manual intervention
Future-proofing your ticket sales
Protecting your ticket sales now and for the future requires more than just hoping your servers can handle surges. Whatever the size of your business, a sudden leap in demand can cause commercially disastrous outages. Virtual waiting rooms are a powerful tool for protecting your interests from an ever-evolving threat, offering a proven solution that enables businesses to capitalise on their peak moments by delivering reliable, fair, and transparent online experiences, no matter the demand.
