How to Avoid Common Issues on Ticketing Sites

Issues with mobile ticketing applications can be a big problem for music fans. You’re sitting in an online queue waiting for tickets to an upcoming Taylor Swift concert, when an issue causes you to lose your place, and by the time you get back to the front, it’s sold out.

Sudden spikes in traffic during popular artist ticket releases, sometimes called “flash floods”, can cause ticketing platforms to slow down or crash if they are not able to handle the volume. Examples include Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in 2023 and Oasis’s 2024 tour.

In this blog post, we identify the most common causes of ticketing app disruptions and offer actionable steps to mitigate their impact and buy tickets more easily.

What Are the Biggest Issues on Ticketing Apps?

Before devising strategies to mitigate potential ticketing app issues, it’s helpful first to identify which has the biggest impact on users.

For our study, we gathered search data on ticketing sites and their crashes, using Keyword Planner to identify peak search periods dating back to March 2022. Similar terms were scraped from subreddits for specific popular artists to identify peaks in discussions of ticketing app crashes.

Finally, reviews were scraped from Google Play using Claude Code across the most searched ticketing apps to identify the most common issues mentioned by reviewers, dating back to March 2024.

We looked at reviews of the top three ticketing sites that operate mobile apps, including Ticketmaster, AXS and Eventbrite, to uncover the biggest issues causing problems for users. Before diving into the topic, it’s essential to note that we’re examining the commonality of complaints in reviews that mention specific issues, and these statistics do not represent the frequency of issues overall on these apps.

App freezes and crashes before purchasing a ticket were among the most common issues on two of the apps, with 31% to 32% of issue-specific reviews mentioning these problems, while users of the third app saw login and authentication as the most common issues mentioned in 16.5% of those reviews.

Other issue categories that were found to have the overall highest percentage of mentions across mobile ticketing apps include accessing and displaying tickets, customer support issues, search function problems, and general slow performance.

Our review study analysed reviews between March 2023 and March 2026. In July 2025, the number of reviews that mentioned app crashes spiked, demonstrating significant stability issues with ticketing apps, likely due to increased site stress from a run of popular musical tours.

Likewise, ticket access and display issues seemed to be more prominent in mid-2025, specifically due to several high-demand events. These events also saw a significant increase in touting and bot-driven ticket sales.

Overall, the highest number of negative reviews across all apps were dedicated to app crashes and freezes, accounting for 29% of reviews highlighting an issue. Login and authentication problems followed, comprising 13%, tied with ticket access and display, which were also mentioned in 13% of issue-specific reviews.

The two rarest issues, based on these reviews, are data, privacy and permissions issues at 0.2%, and app updates and version compatibility at 0.1%.

Artists Impacting Ticket Sales

With ticketing site and app errors occurring mainly during the height of ticket sales of sought-after tour dates by famous artists, it’s important to highlight the impact of artist popularity on the ticket sales process.

For example, searches for ‘Ticketmaster crash’ surged in August 2024 coinciding with the release of tickets for Oasis’ sold out tour.

Which Ticketing Sites Saw the Largest Search Volume Spikes?

Live Nation saw a large increase in search volume for “live nation crash” in August 2024, which was an 8,700% increase from its normal average of 10 searches a month. A total of 67% of searches were made by mobile users.

This was followed by Gigs and Tours, which saw an increase in search volume of 7,700% for “gigs and tours crash” in November 2022. At peak volume, 72% of searches were from mobile users.

Ticketmaster saw a search volume surge for “ticketmaster crash”, with a peak of over 40,000 searches in August 2024, with 73% of those being mobile users. This is an increase of 7,339% from its average monthly search volume.

What this shows overall is that there has been a notable increase in search volume for mobile ticketing sites, which could indicate a user preference for mobile ticket purchases, and peak dates often occur around the summer and autumn.

These figures also show that mobile ticket resale sites have seen increased activity, as some users may have missed the original ticket purchase window due to queueing errors.

Steps You Can Take to Avoid Mobile App Crashes During Ticket Sales

As an app user, there are several ways to manage the queues and minimise any technical errors that block you from purchasing your ticket. These include:

• Update your apps: App developers will often release updates that include bug fixes and performance improvements. Before your ticket sale begins, make sure your app is updated to the latest version on the App Store or Google Play Store.
• Clear cache and close unnecessary apps: Cached data and background apps can slow down your phone and cause any ticketing apps to crash. Clear your app cache, then close any background apps you aren’t using.
• Use a reliable internet connection: A slow or unstable internet connection can cause delays or make apps freeze. Always use a reliable and secure Wi-Fi connection with a strong signal, or a wired connection on a laptop when purchasing tickets.
• Pre-register or log in early: If you log into your ticketing app right when tickets go on sale, it can overwhelm company servers before they have time to adjust. This can cause delays and crashes. If allowed, pre-register for tickets or log in to your account well in advance of the start of the sale.
• Limit app usage during sale: Frequent app interactions can cause delays or crashes in your ticketing app. During a sale, disable all notifications and background processes to ensure your device’s resources are focused on the ticketing app.
• Check for known issues: Sometimes apps can fall foul of common bugs and crashes. Keep an eye on the app’s social media and user forums like Reddit. If the mobile app is known to be experiencing issues, switch to a desktop or laptop if possible and try purchasing from there.
• Register for artist presales: If there is a specific artist you want to see live, register for any presales on shows they might be offering. This can help reduce queue times and the likelihood of errors for both you and other customers purchasing tickets when the main sale goes live. It staggers the number of people queuing for tickets and lessens the server load on ticketing sites.

Methodology

Data accessed March 6 for Keyword Planner, dating back to March 2022. Data accessed March 23 for Reddit. Data accessed April 8 to 9 for Google Play, dating back to March 2023.

The study used Keyword Planner to gather search data on ticketing sites and their crashes, identifying peak search times dating back to March 2022. The same terms were then scraped on Reddit, using musical artist subreddits, to identify peaks in mentions of ticketing app crashes. For the final stage, the reviews were scraped from Google Play using Claude Code across the most searched ticketing apps to identify the most common issues mentioned by reviewers.