There was great interest in the free “Op De Ring” festival in Amsterdam on Wednesday, which caused problems when ordering tickets. People who wanted to attend the festival in honor of Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary often had to wait for hours.
The festival, which will take place on June 21 on the closed A10 motorway around Amsterdam, is free of charge, but tickets must be reserved. These were made available today, but not without a struggle. Because the system can only process a certain number of tickets per minute, people are in the digital queue for hours, the organization explains to Het Parool.
A public survey by the municipality beforehand showed that 680,000 people were interested in the 280,000 tickets available for the various entrances and time slots. Everyone was only allowed to reserve four tickets, but there turned out to be a leak in the system. If someone had gone through the queue, ordered tickets and refreshed the page, more tickets could be ordered without queuing again.
Organizer Amsterdam 750 writes on Instagram that “in a limited number of cases it has been shown that you could order tickets again with a different telephone number”. That error has now been fixed. The ordered tickets are not yet final, the organization emphasizes. Checks are still being made on how many tickets people have ordered. “If the number turns out to be too large, the order can be canceled and these tickets will be available again.”
Tickets are now being offered online for a fee. Organizer Amsterdam 750 calls on Instagram not to buy them. They say that these tickets will be invalidated. All tickets via the official channel have now been allocated.