Fans suffer long queues and tech glitches trying to buy Ashes tickets

It was the biggest pre-sale in Cricket Australia history, but things quickly fell apart as fans across the globe were left seeing red.

Cricket diehards faced long queues of more than 200,000 fans and frustrating last-minute glitches as they attempted to secure tickets to the much-anticipated Ashes summer Test series.

Demand for the Australia versus England Tests was unprecedented with 160,000 tickets moving in the biggest ever pre-sale for Cricket Australia.

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But for every lucky fan who sailed through the queues, there were many others who spent more than an hour praying to advance beyond the “virtual lounge” and onto the purchasing page.

And while ticket outlet Ticketek released a statement that the sale went ahead “all without issue”, many of those got oh-so-close only to say they had been unceremoniously booted off the page by a glitch and forced to rejoin the queue.

Seasoned cricket ticket buyers said the 2025/26 summer season’s pre-sale was the first time they had gone through the process of registering for a code and then heading to the virtual queue to buy tickets to the Ashes Tests or one-day and T20 series against South Africa and India.

There were almost 20 events on sale at staggered times by state, opening with tickets to the Canberra and Hobart T20 games first to kick off at 10am, followed by Queensland matches at 11am, South Australia and Northern Territory games at 1pm, Victorian fixtures including the Boxing Day Test at the MCG from 2pm and the New Year’s Test at the SCG from 3pm.

Fans faced nightmare queues trying to get Ashes tickets.

The ticket sales for the upcoming Ashes series didn’t go according to plan. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

But many fans were confused by the ever-expanding virtual lounge as each pre-sale went live and despaired they wouldn’t make it through the 200,000 people in front of them to the purchase page where there was a limit of nine tickets per transaction.

One fan who was desperate to buy tickets to the SCG Test logged on via Cricket Australia at 2.30pm to land behind more than 170,000 people and 90 minutes later, still had over 30,000 hopefuls in front of him.

“Ashes Cricket ticket queue – what a joke – so much for giving preference to those who go every year!!” wrote one frustrated fan who was virtually staring down 179991 people ahead of him.

Another despondent fan compared the process to the hell of buying Oasis tickets.

Buying tickets to the Ashes wasn’t meant to be like this. (Photo by Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)

“Well, I’ve got to say @cricketaus have done a great job devising a ticket buying system for the Ashes that was even more frustrating than getting Oasis tickets. Worst thing is I don’t know if my purchase has gone through successfully at all …”

And it wasn’t just the Australians having a touch time of navigating the torture that is buying tickets in the digital era.

“Got to the front for Ashes tickets, selected my day then couldn’t select how many tickets I wanted. Booted out. Back of the Queue. Nice one. Glad I woke up early,” commented Jamie Hodder on X.

But surely the greatest pain to be inflicted on sports or concert fans trying to part with their cash in exchange for those precious tickets is getting through only to be booted out thanks to a tech glitch.

“Awful ashes ticket experience so far. Got into queue of 20000+ waited 50 minutes to get access and timed out in about 5 mins with very limited ticket availability. Now in a new queue of 200000+ #shite,” wrote Andy Hadley.

Fans endured nothing but pain while trying to secure tickets. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Yet there were others who sailed through the process to claim ticket victory, like Jamie McT.

“I know folk complain about process for #Ashes tickets. But Ticketek and Cricket Australia,

it all worked fine – logged on at 13:45 for 14:00 start of MCG presale. Had approx 25,000 ahead of me but by 14:25 got Day 1 Boxing Day tickets.”

Ticketek released a statement in relation to the sale, conceding some fans were left disappointed and blaming a system designed to detect bots for any tech issues.

“The demand for Cricket Australia’s Summer of Cricket has sold at an unprecedented rate, all without issue,” a Ticketek spokesperson said.

“We recognise that when we have high demand events with limited inventory, that some fans will miss out and will be disappointed.

“We encourage all customers not to use multiple browsers when trying to access tickets. Our systems are designed to prevent and block access from bots and customers attempting to access the site with multiple browsers may be flagged by our bot prevention service.”

Originally published as Fans suffer long queues and tech glitches trying to buy Ashes tickets