Thousands of music fans have reportedly tried to sign-up for presale tickets for The 1975's upcoming Manchester show this morning, with some complaining that the link to sign up for pre-sale doesn't work.
The small and intimate gig, which takes place at Gorilla on Whitworth Street on February 1, was announced by the band's frontman Matty Healy in December, leading fans to bombard the small music venue with requests for tickets. The gig, which is part of BRITS Week 2023 presented by Mastercard for War Child, takes place after the Manchester band's date at the AO Arena on Friday, 20 January.
Earlier this morning, details for pre-sale were shared across War Child and The 1975 and Gorilla's social accounts, with customers given the chance to sign up for pre-sale before midnight tonight in order to get tickets before they go on general sale on Friday. Gorilla also sent an an email round to its subscribers explaining when pre-sale will go live at 9am on Thursday, January 12, while general sale will be from 9am on Friday, January 13.
Read more: The 1975's Matty Healy announces intimate gig will take place in Manchester next year
The music venue also explained that if you're unlucky in securing tickets from pre-sale or general sale, there would also be a War Child special prize draw. Open to applicants aged 16 and over, each winner in the prize draw will receive two standard entry, standing tickets for the event they have entered for.
The email also states that entering multiple times will increase the chances of winning, however the maximum number of tickets that can be won per show is 2. Organisers for Gorilla added: "Thank you everyone for being so patient, we know how intense the wait for this news has been (thanks Matty for announcing it way too soon/without notice!).
"Good Luck getting tickets! Please please please be careful of ticket touts & scammers, we do not want you to get ripped off for this show."
And from reaction to the pre-sale announcement on Twitter this morning, it looks like many fans will have to enter the prize draw due to the unprecedented demand for tickets for The 1975 show. After the link to sign up o pre-sale went live from the War Child Twitter, fans were quick to comment that the link wasn't working and that once through customers were not able to submit the form to sign up ahead of the cut off tonight.
One fan trying to sign up wrote: "the link for presale doesn't work! How can we sign up if the link doesn't work!" Another added: "yeah link doesn't work aha", and a third simply wrote "LINK". Other's asked whether the sheer number of 1975 fans had broken or crashed the website, with one person writing: "Did we break the website already".
Once through to site, some music-fans reported server errors and issues with submitting the form. One person wrote: "everytime i submit it it goes through and when i try and redo it, it says i’ve already used my email address", while another wrote: "it says there's an error but i am already a member, does this mean it has worked? thanks!"
War Child quickly issued an update on Twitter, writing: "Our website is currently struggling with the traffic to the BRITs Week presale sign up. If you are having issues, you can also sign up here", followed by a new link to the pre-sale sign-up form. Throwing their support behind the organisation, Gorilla tweeted soon after, writing: "Be nice to our friends at @Warchilld".
Fortunately, some fans were able to get through to sign up, with many posting images of the completed form saying 'thanks for signing up' to Gorilla's Twitter thread. With a capacity of around 550, Gorilla is one of Manchester's smaller gig venues and has said that they are "over the moon" to be hosting what is "hands down the biggest gig we've had at Gorilla".
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