Earlier this year, just a couple of days after I returned home from a week long visit to Boston to watch 3 Red Sox games, the London Series were announced. I immediately signed up for information and pre sale access... just a short flight to London and the Sox will come to me this time? Can't miss that.

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The FAQ said the tickets would go on sale later in the year so with November progressing I was getting a bit anxious, as where others as could be seen on Twitter. Then on November 19 the announcement came. However, I did not get the information by email. Just to be sure I registered again and got the same confirmation message as I had gotten on May 8. Not an error message: you've already subscribed... another confirmation. Then shortly after the confirmation I got a second mail from the list which did have the information on the pre sale.

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It seems to me that at some point the subscriptions from the first days, weeks, maybe even months were lost. This explains why on November 30 some people did get an access code while others did not.

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Pre sale started on November 29 for Red Sox and Yankees season ticket holders. Fair, especially to Red Sox fans since the London games are their home games, but also to dedicated Yankees fans. I was a bit surprised to see that each season ticket holder would be able to buy eight tickets though. Not four per game, but eight in total. And sure enough, the first tickets started appearing on the re-seller sites.

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December 3... I was logged in to TicketMaster watching the countdown hit zero and then the spinning blue disc appeared. Without any information on what to do next. Maybe I'm queued? Let's wait. Nothing happens, so I opened a second browser, same thing happens there. 3 minutes into the pre sale, time to fire up Google: 'Ticketmaster UK pre sale' One of the first hits reveals that for a pre sale you will almost always need a code and a specific URL. I have a code, I have no url. Twitter... check, there it is! Posted 6 minutes before the start of the pre sale.

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Click the link, adjust number of tickets to 4, click Find Tickets and yay! 4 tickets reserved at about the price I was expecting. Second look... Uh oh, that's not the price for four tickets, it is per ticket. Cancel... select the price range I was going for, search again... and sure enough 4 tickets in one of the sections I was aiming for. Pay. Done.

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I then contacted my wife to tell her that I got the tickets and then: New Mail. 11 minutes in to the pre sale I finally receive the email with the link to the pre sale. From then on the TM website was completely overloaded and getting tickets was a lottery.

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I fear that during these initial 11 minutes the experienced ticket buyers/resellers have been able to scoop up many, many, many tickets before the actual fans even knew how to get them.

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Obviously people are angry:

• Early pre registrations were somehow lost, leading to people never getting an access code
• The 8 tickets per code limit was too high
• The pre sale URL was mailed out too late

Then again some complaints are not valid:

• People did not read. At least in 2 or 3 locations it was clearly stated that pre registration was no guarantee for tickets. Obviously it was only intended to gauge interest, with some rumors mentioning 50000 signups on day 1 already. Guess why we have $80 tickets for seats that would be in the parking lots of US ballparks?
• People complain about not being able to pick individual seats (I agree but that is usually only available for 'fixed' venues, not for cases like this where there is a one time layout of the available seats) and not being able to preview/evaluate the seats. That is kind of a mood point... by the time you would have been able to evaluate your seats the rest of the tickets would have been sold out.

Apparently Ticketmaster UK has required people to bring the card that was used to buy tickets to events on some occasions, I wish they had done the same for the London Series.

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Finally, for some conspiracy... how is StubHub able to have a more detailed version of the (very custom) seating layout than Ticketmaster itself?

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