NFL International Series Munich: Why are there no tickets for Tampa Bay Buccaneers Vs Seattle Seahawks?

Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are coming to Europe.

As European fans of American football get set to converge on Germany on November 13, in the hope of seeing Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady take on the Seattle Seahawks, many fans are wondering why they can’t get tickets.

The game marks the first entry for the NFL International Series in Germany, after years of successful London games in both Wembley and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The NFL first began playing regular season games in the UK in 2007, but now the league plans to branch out

Who’s playing?The Seattle Seahawks will face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Allianz Arena - home of FC Bayern Munich - in Munich, offering many fans from Germany and beyond what may be the final chance to see legendary QB Brady play in what many believe to be his final season.

The seven-time Superbowl winner has previously implied he was retiring before doing an about-turn to come back possibly for one more year.

In the opposite corner, Seattle will take the field without Russell Wilson for the first time in ten years since the talented quarterback was traded to the Denver Broncos. The Seahawks will most likely be led by Geno Smith or Drew Lock (or current 49er Jimmy Garoppolo if you believe the rumours).

But Seahawks fans will be looking forward to seeing star wide receivers Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf.

So what went wrong?

When tickets went on sale this morning many found themselves in an online queue which appeared to be hundreds of thousands of customers long.

This clearly meant not everyone would get a ticket, given that Allianz Stadium has a capacity of 75,024.

A large number of those who saw tickets disappear in seconds have taken to social media to air their suspicions.

Where did all the tickets go?

Complaints focus on the lack of a Captcha measure for security, which can help deter touts.

Fans say that Ticketmaster’s failure to use Captcha for the NFL tickets means that scalpers were able to snap up huge number of tickets very quickly, and resale them at vastly inflated prices.

There are a number of ticket resale sites, many of which are used by touts to turn a huge profit on tickets snapped by by bots – computer programmes designed to buy as many tickets as possible in a very short space of time.

Sites like StubHub and Viagogo were quick to feature resale tickets for the NFL game.

How much are tickets now?

After selling out, a large number of tickets immediately appeared on several second party sites – with the cheapest available resale ticket selling for over £700, despite originally going for around £70 on Ticketmaster.

Others have been shown to be much higher, reaching £1400.

What happens next?

While many fans are calling for Ticketmaster to hit the reset button and recall the tickets, there has not yet been any response from the online retailer.

However it is unlikely that Ticketmaster will bow to these calls.