[tlb]

It's common practice to make tickets hard to buy. You might think they would set the price high enough that the tickets barely sell out, but there are good reasons to allocate some tickets to enthusiastic non-wealthy people. They make better live audiences. This is why people stand in line overnight to get those Pink Floyd tickets. Ticketmaster seems to have built the digital equivalent.

[zeteo]

I think "underpaid developers on tight schedule" is far more likely than "look, the specs said 'hard to buy', you need to put in two extra steps and a random wait!".

[mistercow]

Wouldn't letting the tickets sell out almost instantly achieve the same result? You'd sell only to those enthusiastic enough to sit there hitting the reload button until the exact moment when they become available.

[andrewingram]

But in the long run you end up creating the perception that the ONLY way to buy tickets is camping the website at availability time. Which I suspect would likely result in people just not bothering in the end.