Tickets for a series of concerts in November and December by the recently-reformed boyband Take That went on sale this morning, with many ticketing agencies' websites struggling to cope with the volume of traffic.

Seetickets.com was unavailable shortly after 9am and though it was back online by 10 it was using a simplified interface and bore the message: “We have some major artists on sale today, so we have changed our homepage to help you find them quickly.”

Ticketmaster.co.uk was also running slowly after the tickets went on sale, and attempting to negotiate the purchasing process is still problematic, with error messages regularly popping up. According to internet monitoring firm Keynote Systems between 9.15am and 10.15am the site was only available to 80 per cent of users.

"A lot of Take That fans will be left feeling very discouraged, as the overall performance of several key websites has left many ticketless and disappointed," said Haran Sold of Keynote Sytems.

Sold criticised the agencies for failing to anticipate the high demand for tickets.

"If these events are expected, as was the case with the Take That tour, websites must be pre-tested to ensure that they can handle the increased numbers. Online retailers that don't improve service levels will lose business, while their ticket allocation for future events may also decrease, further harming long-term revenues."

Take That have already added more dates to the tour to cope with the demand for tickets.

http://www.takethattv.com/
http://www.keynote.com/

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