Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment is apologizing to Leafs Nation following a technical glitch that left many hockey fans without access to coveted playoff tickets Thursday morning.
“The link that we had set up unfortunately had some inaccuracy in the detail,” Bob Hunter, executive vice president of MLSE, told reporters Thursday afternoon.
“Both we and Ticketmaster are extremely apologetic,” he said. “They had it fixed in about 30 minutes, but we didn’t realize until we got fan feedback that in fact the link was inaccurate and was wrong.”
As their technology partner, the error was Ticketmaster’s responsibility, Hunter said.
He added that fans can be assured that they will not encounter the same problems when additional blocks of playoff tickets go on sale.
Roughly 72,000 fans – members of the team’s Last Minute Club – were competing for 750 tickets available for each of the team's first two playoff games, Hunter said.
Toronto Maple Leafs fans began expressing confusion and frustration Thursday morning when the sale of tickets was delayed due to the technical glitch.
In a tweet shortly after the tickets were supposed to go on sale, the NHL club confirmed the delay, as hundreds of people flooded Ticketmaster's website for a moment that was almost a decade in the making.
Shortly after 11 a.m., Ticketmaster tweeted an apology and blamed a "technical issue" for the disruption. By that time, it appears the tickets were already sold out.
At 11:50 a.m., MLSE confirmed all of the tickets that were available for the online sale were sold out.
Fans who signed up before a Wednesday deadline received an email containing a password and link to a Ticketmaster website where they could buy tickets. However, the website did not make tickets available for purchase when they were supposed to go on sale at 10 a.m.
About an hour later, the website was functioning as it was supposed to, but it appears people had to click on the email link a second time to fill out the ticket-buying form, instead of simply refreshing the page.
By the time the Maple Leafs and Ticketmaster had acknowledged the problem, many people had already turned to Twitter to vent their frustration.
Twitter user a.fresh tweeted: “@MapleLeafs worst process for buying playoff tickets ever!! I got a front row seat at home I guess. Beers are a lot cheaper too! Go leafs go.”
"I expect the @mapleleafs to reimburse me for the time i've wasted trying to buy playoff tickets.. another reason the leafs suck," wrote Twitter user Nick Phelan.
"Dear @mapleleafs, when you put tickets on sale, you actually have to put some tickets on sale eh," tweeted user Jeremy Black.
Some people figured the tickets sold quickly and they missed out.
"@MapleLeafs Guess they sold out instantaneously? Not surprising, given the numbers," T.J. Goertz wrote.
People who scored a ticket to the Leafs’ first-round home games had to fork over more cash than they would for a regular season game.
Ticket prices are increasing for the playoffs, but the Leafs would not say by how much.
On Ticketmaster’s website earlier Thursday, tickets to Leafs home games in the playoffs were selling for $56.75 to $796.75 each, although the website said prices were subject to change.
“Typical of past practice among teams around the NHL, the pricing for playoff tickets has increased,” said Jamie Deans, a MLSE spokesman. “Larger markets with high demand for hockey tickets will often be among those with the higher increases. Toronto is no exception.”
The NHL playoffs begin April 30, but the Leafs still don’t know who they will face in the first round.
To mark the Leafs’ return to the post-season, the team is planning to hold special events, appearances and giveaways in and around the Air Canada Centre and across Toronto, Deans told CP24.
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