When you see tickets available, they may be among the last few remaining. At that point, it’s likely that other customers are also reaching the front of the queue and trying to buy those same tickets. Here's how our system handles that scenario—and what you can expect.
How Ticket Reservations Work
Tickets are not held for any customer until they’re placed into a basket.
The first person to add the tickets to their basket has them reserved while they complete checkout.
Other customers trying to purchase the same tickets will receive an error if those tickets are no longer available.
This is a critical part of the purchasing flow that ensures fairness, but it can result in frustration when demand is exceptionally high.
How the Queue Helps
Our virtual queue is designed to manage demand and improve fairness:
Instead of tens of thousands of people trying to purchase at once, the queue limits active buyers to a smaller number—typically around 100 at any given moment.
This reduces pressure on the system and makes the purchasing experience smoother for everyone.
Why Not Let Only One Customer Through at a Time?
In theory, we could eliminate contention entirely by allowing just one customer at a time to enter the event page—only when tickets are available.
However, this would mean:
Very long wait times, often several hours
A poor experience for the majority of users
Our current system strikes a balance between fair access and reasonable queue times.
What If I See a Server Error or Maintenance Message?
Skiddle works hard to keep the platform stable and accessible.
Our website uptime exceeds 99.99%, among the best in the industry.
We monitor all aspects of performance and are continually optimising our systems.
Why Do Errors Sometimes Happen?
Despite extensive preparation, certain situations can cause issues:
Unexpected surges in traffic for high-demand events
Technical issues such as server failure or payment processor outages
Third-party system interruptions (e.g., email providers or analytics tools)
We understand this is frustrating. Please know:
Our development team is on-call and responding immediately to resolve issues as they arise
We're fully aware that if our website is down, no one is able to buy tickets—and we’re not able to sell them, so it's always in our best interest to fix problems fast
Summary
When tickets are nearly sold out, multiple customers may attempt to buy the same ones at the same time—the first to act gets the reservation.
Our queue system helps manage demand fairly without forcing hours-long wait times.
We maintain exceptionally high availability, but rare technical issues may still occur. When they do, we’re working behind the scenes to get things back on track as quickly as possible.