Rockies ticket sale goes kaboom

Did the Colorado Rockies put the Notre Dame athletic department in charge of their World Series ticket sales? What a fiasco:

An overwhelming demand for World Series tickets at Coors Field led to an overload of Web site servers Monday, forcing the team to suspend sales just after noon [MDT] and regroup before reopening the sales system.

The Colorado Rockies put as many as 60,000 tickets up for sale, but only online. The company that runs the servers hosting the online ticket sales program reported a problem late Monday morning with the system and said "only a few tickets had been sold."

The company, Paciolan, Inc. which runs evenue.net, said it didn't know exactly what the problem was and that it was working to fix the issue.

"Several hundred" tickets were sold before the system was shut down, said Rockies spokesman Jay Alves. He added that nearly the entire allotment of tickets for the three possible home games in Denver were still available.

Alves reported that about 8.5 million people tried to access the sales Web servers in the opening 90 minutes.

The team said it would announce when online sales would resume, possibly later Monday afternoon.

At some point, you'd think people would stop being surprised by -- and start being prepared for -- extremely heavy traffic for web events like this.

UPDATE: According to the Denver Post, Rockies spokesman Jay Alves "said the servers were overwhelemed this morning and officials had no idea that so many people would try the website."

Seriously?!?

Forget the Notre Dame athletic department. With that sort of lack of imagination and inability to anticipate head-smackingly obvious inevitabilities, this Rockies braintrust has a bright future at FEMA!

Alvie, you're doing a heckuva job!

Comments

[Joe Loy]

Waw haw haw / bunch of idiots :>

[Kristy]

I'm a Sox fan, but before you go blaming the Rockies, it was the MLB that (a) allowed the online-only sale, but who (b) chose the ticketing vendor and clearly didn't prepare enough. Season passholders are already selling their WS seats for anywhere from $1500-$3000 apeice, if anyone's interested in that. Or, you can always just watch for free from my rooftop :)

The stupidest comment I read, however, was in the Denver Business Journal, from MAYOR Hickenlooper himself (keep in mind, this is the MAYOR): "It doesn't bring that many new people to your city who spend all that much money..." UM, hello. The WS doesn't bring in outside money? You think there is no significant economic impact here? Really? 8.5 million people in 90 minutes thought it was worth it. My New England friends are trying to buy tickets too, and then plane tickets, to the games out here. Just sayin' -- what a nerd!

before you go blaming the Rockies, it was the MLB that (a) allowed the online-only sale, but who (b) chose the ticketing vendor and clearly didn't prepare enough.

Wrong on both counts. :) The Red Sox did their ticket sale today through a (successful) ticket lottery, so clearly MLB was not forcing the Rockies to do this the way they did, team management's public statements notwithstanding. And the ticketing vendor, Paciolan, is the Rockies' vendor, not Major League Baseball's. Their client list includes the Rockies, Diamondbacks, Mets, Padres and Phillies, but no other MLB teams.

Anyway, what I was criticizing was the asinine public statements coming from the Rockies VP, namely that they "had no idea" there would be really really high demand. No matter where the actual fault lies for what occurred, any PR person who would make such an absurd statement is entirely deserving of scorn and derision. And thus, I deride him! Muahaha!

[Brendan]

The above comment was by me. :) Anyway, this article, from a couple of days ago, makes clear that MLB did not force the Rockies to do things this way:

Other teams have pursued different methods for selling World Series tickets. The Cleveland Indians - who are playing the Boston Red Sox for the American League title - conducted an online lottery where fans submitted their names and e-mail addresses on the team's Web site. The team then randomly selected names, and those selected were notified by e-mail.

"One of the most important elements of marketing at your event is gathering data, so this was an incredibly wonderful opportunity for us," said Indians spokesman Bob DiBiasio.

The Red Sox sold tickets over the phone and via an online lottery.

A lottery system can help cut down on the number of tickets that fall into the hands of scalpers, but the Rockies decided to sell tickets strictly online after consulting with MLB officials. Team officials say they have measures in place to prevent scalpers from buying big lots of tickets.

"There are a lot of benefits to doing it this way," MLB's Teevan said. "This can help avoid long lines and keep the volume of calls down."

[Brendan]

Oh, and a slight correction. The Red Sox lottery wasn't today. It was several days ago. They and the Indians both distributed tickets well in advance, before they even knew for sure if they'd be in the series. (So all those Indians fans get refunds now.) And as the article makes clear, neither of them did it by the retarded, doomed-to-fail method the Rockies idiotically chose.

Aside from everything else, it's beyond me why the Rockies waited this long. They won the NLCS on, what, last Monday?? Good lord! They had a whole week to do this, and they sat on their hands and devised a system that failed after 90 minutes. If this had happened on, say, Friday, they'd have a lot more time to regroup. Instead, they have to frantically come up with a new plan, and time is ticking down. What a disaster.

[Derek]

1. MLB "allowing" an online-only sale doesn't make them any more responsible than "allowing" the Rockies to, say, draft Tulowitzki. The Rox made the call to go online only, and they're paying dearly for it.

2. The Rox made the call as of Wednesday to remove ticket sales from Coors and from area Rox stores.

3. The Rox didn't have a system in place for this, and it relied on the assistance of outside help and MLB.com up into last week.

4. The Rox selected a vendor that was unreliable, despite the existence of other reliable vendors.

5. "8.5 million people" did not attempt to purchase tickets in 90 minutes; the Web site received 8.5 million hits. That means that every time a fan refreshed the page, the Web site counted a "hit." That means the automatic ticket requests run by scalpers with programming bots performed a number of hits. If every fan made 10 refresh attempts, 850,000 were attempting to buy tickets; if every fan made 100 refresh attempts (or computer scalper bots did the same), 85,000 were attempting to buy tickets. That 8.5 million is deceptive.

6. In terms of "new people," the statement is relatively accurate. This isn't the Super Bowl, where fans from two cities visit a neutral site. Rather, it's where a home crowd dominates. There's no question that visitors will arrive, but it certainly won't be in the numbers that you expect. That said, increased sales from locals in addition to media cash infusions likely to provide a financial benefit.

[Brendan Loy]

UPDATE: Hmm, well, the official statement on the Rockies website describes Paciolan as "Major League Baseball's ticket vendor." That doesn't seem to jive with what Paciolan's website says, but maybe MLB has some special contract with them for the postseason that isn't reflected on the site.

On the other hand, maybe the Rockies are trying to deflect the blame so that angry fans don't marsh down to Coors Field and start rioting.

I'm betting on the latter.

[Kristy]

It doesn't matter what vendor you choose, the MLB has to clear it. What do you think this is, freedom or something?

[Brendan Loy]

Okay, but if the Rockies choose it, and MLB merely clears it (i.e., approves it)... isn't it still primarily the Rockies' fault?

I mean, okay, suppose I'm a reporter for the New York Times, and I write a shoddy, poorly written, poorly researched, biased, horrible story, and my editor "clears" it. If it gets published, can I escape criticism for my actions merely because someone else "cleared" them? Granted, my editor will probably be in trouble too. But I'm probably in the most trouble, because I'm the one who made the initial screw-up.

Unless MLB forced the Rockies to use the vendor and method they chose, the Rockies management cannot escape blame just by saying MLB "allowed" them to do what they did, or "cleared" it. It's still the Rockies' fault.

[Brendan Loy]

P.S. Put another way: I bet MLB would have "cleared" a lot of other, better vendors, too. Like the one the Red Sox used. Or the one the Indians used.

It's still the Rockies' fault for using a crap-ass ghetto vendor that couldn't handle tens of thousands of unique visitors. (Derek's point about the numbers is an excellent one. When you think about the number of reloads each person did, 8.5 million is actually amazingly small. I bet it undercounted because the site crashed so badly that millions of attempted hits probably didn't even register.)

[Brendan Loy]

Problem solved! Kristy, you got $25,000 lying around? :)

Anyway... "The Colorado Rockies plan to make an announcement about the sale of World Series tickets some time after 4 p.m. [MDT]. 9NEWS.com will stream the event live."

[Derek]

Also of note.

-The Sox began their ticket sales last week, and they included a phone-in component as well as an in-person component. The Rox did not begins sales until today and had only one outlet, the online sales.

Like Derek said, it's just the ticket scalpers, with their eight cable modem accounts sucking down 20GB/day/account, performing a mini-DDOS. Entirely predictable, right down to the lack of flood/robot blocking by the vendor. You think Ticketbastard and friends care about you when they can just pass along all costs of dealing with the scalpers instead? However the tickets are sold, the scalpers will find a way to make it miserable for everyone.

[Mad Max, Esquire]

Why are the Rockies handling this? I mean, isn't the World Series a Major League Baseball event? Shouldn't MLB be leading this process instead of leaving the responsibility to a team that has never done anything like this before?

[Rockies are weak!]

The Rockies have proved that they do not desreve to win the league. They cannot even get tickets sales down correctly. Now they will lose 4 strait with not a single fan in their own stands, for only rich out-of-towners and lucky bandwagoners will show.