Adele’s sales delayed for a day by web crash

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Same for Adele’s residency at the Colosseum, where we have hit a virtual construction snag.

Fans in line, online, to purchase tickets Tuesday to the “Weekends With Adele” residency at Caesars Palace have been informed they need to wait until Wednesday to make the purchases. This is due to a widespread web crash midmorning Tuesday.

Ticketmaster has messaged ticket buyers waiting in the online queue: “Due to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage impacting companies globally, all Adele Verified Fan Presales originally scheduled for today have been moved to tomorrow. Impacted fans will receive an email with updated info on their new presale time.”

Ticketmaster has directed fans to return to the site at 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Wednesday, depending on when they were originally scheduled to check in.

Meantime, such secondary-market brokers as StubHub are selling opportunities to buy Adele tickets between $3,000 (upper level) and $30,000 (third-row, center, orchestra section). This is before any tickets are formally onsale.

Ticketmaster had planned to open sales to Adele’s high-demand series on Tuesday morning. But as the first set of fans were ready to enter the ticket-buying link at 10 a.m., the ticket seller reported the Amazon web problems. Originally, the pause was to last four hours. Now it is a day.

Demand for Adele’s shows at the Colosseum, in an exclusive booking partnership with Live Nation, has been so high that all tickets have been reserved through the Verified Fan process. No public sales through the Colosseum box office or through the general Ticketmaster website are offered. Some secondary-market brokers also are likely to pick up tickets.

Those who registered for Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan Presale were notified Monday whether they had been selected to purchase up to four tickets to any of Adele’s shows. According to a news release announcing the series, ticket buyers were then selected on a first-come, first-served basis. Fans who made the cut were then sent a unique code to purchase tickets online Tuesday morning.

And those who do finish off the ticket purchase will need to prove they are vaccinated for COVID, and also test negatively for the virus 48 hours ahead of the performance. Masks, too, are required inside the venue and also in the hotel, keeping with state COVID mandates. Ticketmaster sent that message on Monday, saying that “The Event Organizer” had set the policy.

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.