Music fans scrambling for tickets to Christchurch's Electric Avenue festival have vented their anger and frustration at missing out online, with the event director conceding pre-sale systems were not up to scratch.
One NZ customers were the first to be offered weekend passes during a "48-hour" pre-sale that began at 12pm on Tuesday through Moshtix, followed by Electric Avenue pre-sales at 12pm on Wednesday.
The festival at Hagley Park in February was set to host a record 90,000 people over two days, but organisers said more than 200,000 tickets were in demand.
A number of would-be festival-goers who signed up for pre-sales told RNZ they did not receive a code, codes were invalid or exhausted, or they were kicked off the page.
The pre-sales generated hundreds of comments on social media, some of whom described the system as an "absolute joke" and a "shambles".
"This is absolute bull***. I waited for almost an hour finally got to the ticket sales and then as soon as I hit pay all sales have been exhausted," one person said.
Another said the system felt "less like a fair pre-sale and more like a strategy to hype the event and push fans toward expensive VIP options".
Fans also complained about tickets not being held in carts while people entered payment details, which meant they were snapped up by others at the last moment.
One woman, who did not wish to be named, said she and a colleague were left empty-handed after waiting in an online queue for about 45 minutes.
"By that time all tickets except VIP had sold out. I know a lot of people who tried and either never received the link they'd signed up for or got through to find no tickets left," she said.
Others queried tiered weekend pass prices from first to fourth and final release, with a six-ticket limit, ranging from $289.90 to $359.90 plus fees, according to a screenshot seen by RNZ.
In a statement, festival director Callam Mitchell said organisers would make changes to the pre-sales system.
"We know how disappointed people are - we are bitterly disappointed also - the various systems around presale simply weren't up to scratch," he said.
"We will be making substantial changes in the future to ensure this never happens again.
"At the same time however, the demand was like we've never encountered, with people registering interest for five times the number of tickets available. Between the two registration systems we operated, more than 200,000 tickets were in demand for the festival."
General tickets and single day passes go on sale on Friday at 12pm.
Iconic New Zealand band Split Enz is Friday night's headliner, with members performing together for the first time in almost 20 years.
Grammy-nominated Australian house DJ/producer Dominic Matheson, better known as Dom Dolla, would headline Saturday night.
Other international drawcards included Kesha, Pendulum, Basement Jaxx, Leftfield, Becky Hill, The Streets, Sammy Virji, Peking Duk, Röyksopp and Sudan Archives.
Aside from Split Enz, the local contingent included L.A.B. Supergroove, Kora, Fazerdaze, Drax Project, Leisure, Greg Churchill and Frank Booker.
In July American-owned multinational Live Nation revealed it had bought Team Event, the company behind Electric Avenue.
