Avengers Endgame ticket sales cross Star Wars pre-booking in just 6 hours, websites crash

Marvel superhero movie Avengers: Endgame on Tuesday broke all records of advance ticket sales. While the advance ticket sales of the film, which marks the conclusion of 22 Marvel movies, surpassed the last Star War films, some tickets appeared on resale platforms with asking prices of up to $500 (Rs 35,226) each.

Fandango and Atom, two of the top ticketing websites in the United States, said first-day advance sales for Disney’s Avengers: Endgame surpassed the 2015 movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens and 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi also from Disney. They did not give sales figures.

Fan surveys last year showed that Avengers: Endgame was the most anticipated film of 2019.

Fandango Managing, Editor Erik Davis, said in a statement, “Avengers: Endgame sales have exceeded all expectations and surpassed Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the previous record-holder, to become Fandango’s top-selling title in its first 24 hours of sales, and it accomplished that feat in only 6 hours.”

Atom said that the movie has set a record for its mobile ticketing service, selling three times more tickets in the first hour than last year’s Avengers: Infinity War.

On eBay, a single ticket for a first-day IMAX screening in Hollywood was being offered for $500 (Rs 35,226). Starting bids for other tickets were around $35 (Rs 2396) each.

Fans took to social media to complain about websites crashing, error codes and long waits to get their tickets.

Took me 5 hours to get #AvengersEndgame tickets, tweeted Meghan Keatley.

It’s been hours and they paused the site, a fan called Bakuhoe wrote on Twitter. Five hours later Bakuhoe tweeted, It was fun waiting with y’all, hope you all get tickets and we can suffer at the diabolical hands of Marvel together.

Avengers: Infinity War was the biggest movie of 2018, grossing $2.04 billion (Rs 13,967 crore) at the worldwide box office.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens, with a global box office of $2.06 billion (Rs 14,104 crore), is the third biggest movie of all time after Avatar and Titanic, respectively.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo took to their shared Twitter page to react to the news. Sharing a screenshot of the story, the wrote, Unbelievable. You guys are awesome. #WhateverItTakes.