Thousands of Grand Prix fans forced to wait as global outage strikes Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster has been forced to postpone the sale of tickets to next year’s Australian Grand Prix, blaming a global third-party outage for the delay.

General admission and grandstand tickets were scheduled to go on sale to the public on Tuesday after pre-sales opened last week, with fans clambering to get prized seats to watch emerging Australian Formula 1 star Oscar Piastri and his compatriot Jack Doohan, who has been promoted to a full-time driver for the Alpine F1 Team in 2025.

General admission tickets for next year’s Australian Grand Prix, featuring homegrown star Oscar Piastri, were put on hold for a day.Credit: Getty Images

However, a statement on the event’s official Facebook page confirmed there was a delay.

“Due to a global third-party outage, the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix 2025 general public on sale will be delayed until tomorrow Wednesday 9 October 12pm (AEDT),” the statement read.

“We apologise for the inconvenience.”

The issue is with the Ticketmaster platform. Grand Prix officials are awaiting confirmation but expect the platform to be back up and running on Wednesday.

Ticketmaster’s largest shareholder is Liberty Media, which has the commercial rights to Formula 1.

Two pre-sales for the March 16 race have already taken place – on October 2 for members of the paid Access24 program, and another on Monday, for those taking part in a pre-sale ballot.

More than 100,000 fans sought tickets through Ticketmaster last year. Friday, Saturday and Sunday tickets were sold out, with event boss Travis Auld this month declaring the focus for next year was on also having a sold-out Thursday.

Next year’s race will have the added attraction of seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton appearing in a Ferrari for the first time.

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.