Australian ticketing company Ticketek was offline on Monday (November 18), causing a major outage on the platform while sparking concerns from fans of bands such as Twenty One Pilots that the outage could affect upcoming shows this week.
According to representatives of the ticketing giant, one of the “big two” operating in Australia (the other being Ticketmaster), the blackout was a “precautionary measure” in response to “system monitoring indicating an increased threat level”.
On social media, ticket holders for a Twenty One Pilots concert at Rod Laver Arena on Tuesday (November 19) are increasingly voicing their concerns that the ticketing company will not be back online in time for the show. Officials from the Melbourne & Olympic Parks Trust, which manages the arena, did not respond to questions from Bulletin board.
Ticketek, part of the TEG Group, issued an update on social media. “Ticketek would like to thank its Customers and Partners for their patience while our systems were temporarily offline,” reads a post on X. “Our systems were back online earlier this morning and we apologize for any inconvenience . We took this action as a precautionary measure in response to system monitoring indicating an elevated threat level.”
@Ticketek_AU the website and app are still working. I want to buy presale tix for @KasabianHQ at @Enmore_Theatre
How do I make a purchase if the site is down?
— Mick Gee (@boomshanka1976) November 18, 2024
On Monday, visitors to Ticketek's main website discovered a message that read: “Ticketek's website is under maintenance. We apologize that the update is taking longer than expected.”
The cause of the outage is unknown, although a note circulating online that appears to have been issued by a venue that uses Ticketek claims that the company had voluntarily taken its network offline to “investigate some unusual online activity and, as As a precaution, Ticketek Australia and New Zealand websites and apps are temporarily offline today.”
The note adds: “Ticketek is working to restore access as soon as possible and apologize for any inconvenience caused. Ticketek is working hard to restore the site in the next few hours.”
Ticketek's pages in the UK, Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia remained operational during Monday's outage.
Ticketek falls under the umbrella of Geoff Jones-led TEG, which is now majority owned by Silver Lake and was recapitalized in February in a deal with KKR Credit Markets and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek. TEG's portfolio also includes TEG Sport, TEG Experiences, Paul Dainty's concert promotion business, TEG Dainty, SXSW Sydney, Qudos Bank Arena, Softix, TicketCharge, TicketWorld and Ovation.
