Eurovision tickets sell out in under an hour; More available next month

It took less than an hour for the first tranche of Eurovision 2020 tickets to sell out on Thursday, the song competition said in a statement. Ticket sales for the semi-finals and the Grand Final in Rotterdam opened up at noon, with some customers complaining that access to the website was buggy and limited.

Some 80 thousand individuals used 200 thousand devices to try and access the festival's ticketing service, Eurovision said. Fans trying to score their tickets to the May 2020 event dates said they were shown a blank screen during their wait, with no information to update them on their positions in line.

Dedication. Good luck! 🤞 https://t.co/92fd8nipdq

— Songfestival (@songfestival) December 12, 2019

More tickets will go on sale in January, and then again in March, according to newspaper AD. "The fact that it went so fast does show how popular the Songfestival is," executive producer Sietse Bakker told the paper.

At face value, ticket prices range from 18.50 to 250 euros. Tickets for the Grand Final Live Show were already up for resale on StubHub ranging from nearly 900 euros on up to 3 thousand euros. On Viagogo, the prices were between 600 and 900 euros at the time of publishing.

https://twitter.com/songfestival/status/1205085947584491521​

Eurovision said it was taking measures to reduce predatory pricing on the resale market by first linking tickets to the buyer's name. Purchasers are also being limited to a maximum of four tickets per person.

Security at the venue, Ahoy Rotterdam, can request identification from each attendee to enforce the policy, Eurovision said last week. The organization is working with Paylogic for retail sales, and Ticket Swap on resale tickets, and cautioned its users that those official partners were the best way to prevent fraudulent purchases.