Rugby World Cup organisers have defended their ticketing system from criticism – and urged fans to be patient – after frustrated customers faced difficulties or waited up to five hours in a bid to secure seats at rugby’s showpiece tournament in Australia next year.
The first batch of tickets for the 2027 Rugby World Cup were up for grabs from midday on Wednesday in a pre-sale phase, in which registered fans had the chance to secure a limited number of seats to all 52 games at the tournament.
The pre-sale ticket phase runs for two weeks – closing on March 4 – but early demand saw Taylor Swift-like scenes, with the Rugby World Cup ticketing website running extremely slowly under the large traffic, leaving fans stuck in limbo for hours in the waiting room.
Social media was duly flooded with angry ticket buyers getting increasingly frustrated in the queue and with seemingly little progress; particularly those in the northern hemisphere who’d stayed up in the wee hours of the morning to try and secure tickets.
Some reported then being blocked from buying tickets due to having “restricted access”, which was related to settings on their phone or computer, or even dropping out after getting past the waiting room.
The long waiting times appeared to be related to slow turnover, given people had 30 minutes to buy tickets; far more than most events.
After four hours of the pre-sale, only category A and category B tickets for the final at ANZ Stadium were still available, priced at $1950 and $1550 respectively. The allocation of category C and D tickets – with the latter still priced at over $600 per seat – were exhausted.
“The system is performing as intended during the Presale,” the Men’s Rugby World Cup 2027 organisation said in a statement.