Anyone attending the inauguration this Monday and hoping to purchase some last minute tickets to President Obama’s inaugural ball and parade will be out of luck.
Ticketmaster, the ticket sales company who had been given the task to release these prized tickets, released them hours earlier than had been scheduled.
The tickets were supposed to be released to eager buyers early on Jan. 7.
However, due to an error they were released the night of Jan. 6 and were completely sold out.
Ticketmaster teamed up with the Presidential Inaugural Committee to send the ticket information to potential buyers.
However, a technical error caused Ticketmaster to not release the actual tickets, as opposed to just the information.
By Monday morning, tickets to both the ball and inaugural parade were sold out.
Ticketmaster released an apology to users:
“During testing of our email system tonight, you may have inadvertently received an invitation to purchase tickets for 2013 Inauguration events, including the Inaugural Ball or the Inaugural Parade.
Public tickets to these events were originally scheduled to go on sale tomorrow morning-you received the email tonight in error, and Ticketmaster takes responsibility for this mistake.”
These tickets, which were originally $60, have now been found online at websites such as eBay to be upwards of thousands of dollars by scalpers.
Potential buyers have not been silent about their disappointment with Ticketmaster and the PIC with many posting angry messages to respective Facebook pages.
Regardless of Ticketmaster’s mistake, the PIC has said that it still fulfilled their goal of selling a limited number of tickets, despite having many of them go to scalpers.
If you were unable to purchase your tickets for the inauguration ceremony, they are still available through members of Congress.
Those interested better hurry, as the inauguration for Barack Obama’s second term is just days away on Monday, Jan. 21.