Ticket sales to Boston College’s annual Mile 21 Concert, featuring T-Pain, were shut down after a glitch allowed students to purchase multiple tickets, according to Robsham Theater Arts Center Director Kier Byrnes.
“Mile 21 T-Pain ticket sales were paused on Wednesday morning, April 3, 2024, after our third-party ticketing vendor identified a glitch in the system allowing some students to receive multiple tickets,” Byrnes wrote in a statement to The Heights.
Online ticket sales for the concert went live at 10 a.m. on Wednesday through the Robsham Theater site, which partners with VBO Tickets as its third-party vendor. Students experienced multiple ticket purchases and website crashes due to a glitch in the system.
“I was like in the queue on [Wednesday], and it just was not loading at all,” Eliza Trieste, MCAS ’25, said. “I got on maybe twenty minutes late, and it was just totally crashing, and I was unable to get a ticket.”
The debacle was not BC’s first ticketing issue related to a third-party vendor. Last February, multiple students experienced fraudulent credit card activity after purchasing tickets through the University’s third party-vendor, Audience View.
When Jordan Paul, MCAS ’26, tried to secure her ticket to the T-Pain concert, she accidentally received two, she said.
“The site was just being weird and wasn’t loading and kept crashing, and I thought that I didn’t get one,” Paul said. “But I accidentally got two because it wouldn’t let me remove them from my cart, and then I got two. I got the confirmations for them.”
After being notified that some students received multiple tickets, BC reached out to students to resolve the issue, according to Byrnes.
“Upon Boston College being notified, we worked with the vendor to rectify the issue, notified impacted students, and ensured only one ticket per student would remain active,” Byrnes said in her statement.
Paul said she knew many students who had issues acquiring tickets for the event.
“I know a lot of people that didn’t get one or had a bad time getting one, which is kind of weird because it’s literally in a parking lot,” Paul said.
Trieste also said the website has also crashed in the past, which makes the ticketing process frustrating for students.
“I feel like the site never works and just always takes so long, and is just really frustrating,” Trieste said.
Ticket sales went live again by 2 p.m., and the concert was officially sold out around 4:45 p.m., according to Byrnes.
Ian Lee, MCAS ’26, said he was able to get his ticket that afternoon.
“I know in the morning they released it, and I heard it was full—or it was sold out—and then my friend told me to check their website again to see if they released some more, and I checked, and I got some,” Lee said.
In the future, Paul suggested BC implement a new system to stagger entry to the ticket portal and improve the site’s functionality.
“I think make it just so if you’re a student, you can just get a ticket,” Paul said. “I’m not sure how to do that because I know it crashes online, but maybe something where it could go in waves based off of your grade or your last name.”
