Oasis website crashes as fans clamour to get reunion tour tickets

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The Oasis website has crashed and Ticketmaster has placed visitors to its website in a queue as fans clamour to get a spot at the band’s reunion tour.
Tickets for the tour go on sale on Saturday morning, after a select few fans were able to buy theirs early, on Friday evening, if they signed up to a pre-sale ballot and were lucky enough to receive an access code by email.
In the rush to get tickets, Oasis’s website has been replaced with a page which tells visitors: “This page replaces the main site due to high loading.”
Visitors to the Ticketmaster website have been placed in a queue, with others reporting their browsers have crashed entirely.
Manchester-based promoter SJM Concerts’ website Gigs and Tours is unable to load since around 8.10am.
It displays messages saying: “Service unavailable” and “the service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later”.
For some of those trying to get tickets to the band’s Dublin shows, which went up for sale earlier on Saturday, Ticketmaster had crashed entirely.
Similar issues were encountered on the ticketmaster.ie page for the two shows at Dublin Croke Park shows, which went on sale at 8am.
Instead of a page opening to buy tickets, an error number was displayed, which usually indicates a web page is unable to handle any more connections.
A similar code was visible at gigsinscotland.com/artist/oasis as Scottish fans had difficulties getting onto the website for the Edinburgh shows.
The website tickets.seetickets.com/tour/oasis, where you can book for several UK shows, also appeared unavailable.
A message said: “Our website is very busy! We have lots of people looking for tickets and you are being held on this page until a space becomes available. This page will refresh automatically.”
UK tickets went on general sale at 8am through Gigs and Tours, ticketmaster.co.uk, gigsinscotland.com and seetickets.com.
 Jonathan Brown, chief executive of the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that fans need to “open their eyes and protect themselves”.
He added: “It’s a dreadful combination, I suppose, you’ve got that high level of emotion, a high level of excitement about Oasis reforming, and a limited supply of tickets – and that’s going to lead to problems, it’s going to lead to people trying to scam people.”
Tom Kiehl, UK Music chief executive, also called inflated ticket prices of “great concern” during the Radio 4 show.
Mr Kiehl added: “Obviously, it’s a natural tendency, if you can’t get tickets, to find alternative sources but I very much urge music music fans today, if they don’t get tickets, not to take that route.”