The shambles surrounding the final ticket sales push for this summer’s Commonwealth Games "looks set to continue into the weekend as organisers continue to work around the clock to solve serious technical problems," according to Martyn McLaughlin of the SCOTSMAN. Organizers of Glasgow 2014 said that they hope to have a better idea “in coming days” of when the ticketing website will be back up and running. Officials behind the sporting event and the ticketing agent, Ticketmaster, said they were still “urgently reviewing” the performance of the site, which was pulled indefinitely on Tuesday evening amid "ongoing struggles to cope with the volume of traffic." The continuing difficulties with the ticketing system "represents a high-profile embarrassment surrounding what organisers had hoped would be a positive development." Ticketmaster -- which routinely deals with online bookings for major events and concerts throughout the U.K. -- said it regretted “any frustration or disruption” caused (SCOTSMAN, 5/14). In London, Simon Hart reported organizers of the Commonwealth Games "were forced to close down their ticketing website." The decision "was a further embarrassment" for Ticketmaster, which "came in for heavy criticism two years ago when its ticketing website for the London Olympics crashed under the weight of the public demand." Glasgow 2014 CEO David Grevemberg said, “The ticket system has not met capacity and has not coped with demand. In the past 28 hours we’ve gone through a number of technical solutions with Ticketmaster which have not solved the situation” (TELEGRAPH, 5/14).
