WASHINGTON â€" All the public tickets to President Obama's official inaugural ball and parade were snapped up Sunday â€" a day before they were scheduled to go on sale â€" after Ticketmaster inadvertently sent out e-mails announcing they were available, inaugural officials said on Monday.
Mr. Obama's inaugural planners announced last month that a limited number of ball tickets â€" they would not say how many â€" would be available to the public for $60 apiece, and had asked people who were interested to sign up on the official inaugural Web site. The committee was also selling tickets to the inaugural parade for $25 apiece.
The committee said tickets would become available this morning on a first-come, first-served basis.
But on Sunday evening, Ticketmaster, which was handling the sal es, “experienced a technical error that inadvertently caused an e-mail to go out ahead of schedule,'' said Addie Whisenant, a spokeswoman for the inaugural committee. Would-be purchasers were notified that tickets were available for sale.
“The Ticketmaster site was overwhelmed, slowing the purchasing process,'' Ms. Whisenant said. “Ticketmaster has taken responsibility for this mistake.''
After the glitch was discovered, people who signed up for the e-mail alert received another electronic message from Ticketmaster, under the inaugural committee's logo, notifying them that the error occurred “during testing of our e-mail system.â€
There are currently no more public tickets available; Ms. Whisenant said only that Ticketmaster would be in touch with would-be purchasers “with additional information on ticket sales.'' The inaugural Web site sign-up page now says the ticket request period has closed.
