Sales for Garth Brooks Drive-In Event Paused by Ticketmaster Glitch

Some Garth Brooks fans attempting to buy a ticket to his upcoming drive-in concert event on Friday found themselves unable to do so, due to a glitch on the Ticketmaster website. When tickets went on sale, Ticketmaster sold around 50,000 in two hours before glitches on the site caused approximately 120,000 orders to stall. Ticket sales were halted until 11 a.m. CT on Saturday, and fans were able to resume purchasing tickets for the upcoming event.

“We had an issue today during the on-sale in which fans may have received an error message during checkout; however, their order and credit card was processed, causing some fans to have duplicate tickets and charges, which are being refunded,” Ticketmaster said in a statement, via AL.com. “We will be putting all the events back on sale tomorrow, Saturday at 12pm ET / 9am PT. These will be general admission tickets so don’t worry, you have another chance to join us at the drive-in for a great Garth event.”

“First of all, thank you,” Brooks said in a video on Twitter after the crash. “First and foremost, people waiting in line two to three hours today, four hours, that didn’t get a shot at one of the cars, car spaces. So here’s what they told me.” He explained that there were likely around half a million people waiting to buy tickets and he couldn’t figure out where the “bottleneck” was before realizing that the “credit card people from the universe” site was having issues processing credit cards. “For those people who still wanna do this and pay regular prices for it, Ticketmaster’s gonna put them on sale tomorrow, Saturday, noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific,” Brooks said, reminding fans that the shows are general admission. “I totally understand if you don’t want to give this a chance, totally get it. If you do, this thing is turning out to be one of the most stupid, coolest things on the planet and I’m lucky to get to be a part of it, lucky to get to be with you.”

Brooks’ show on June 27 will be broadcast to 300 drive-in theaters across the country simultaneously in a unique live music experience. “This one guy came to me and said, ‘Hey, look, we can put 300 drive-in theaters together if you will create a concert solely for the drive-ins. We can have families jump in the car, get them out on Saturday night,’” he said on Good Morning America on Thursday. “They’re going to run it just like a regular concert, but this is going to be all over North America, one night only. We are excited because this is a reason to get out of the house, but at the same time you get to follow all the COVID rules from every individual state and you get to have fun and stay within the guidelines of social distancing… we’re calling it ‘social distancing partying.’”