'Malicious attack' faulted; Rox have 'backup plans'

Scalper software a possible culprit for Web site crash

Chris Walsh, James Paton And Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News

Published October 23, 2007 at midnight

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Cancel your lunch appointments, cross your fingers and get ready to do it all over again.

If you dare.

Tens of thousands of Colorado Rockies fans unable to score tickets Monday for the World Series will get another crack at noon today when the team begins online sales for the second time in as many days.

Nearly all of the estimated 54,000 tickets reserved for the general public, about 18,000 a game, are still available.

The teams said in an 8 p.m. news conference that "an external and malicious attack" paralyzed its ticketing operation on Monday, locking out all but a few hundred fans and forcing the Rockies to halt sales.

The club's Web site fielded more than 8.5 million hits in just 90 minutes, and just 500 tickets were sold.

Rockies spokesman Jay Alves declined to elaborate on the attack that brought down the site, but he said the team has plans if it happens again today.

"We absolutely have backup plans in place and should something go wrong we will immediately" employ them, Alves said.

It could have been a "denial of service attack" that overloaded the Rockies' ticket system with requests, said Dave Bahr, chairman of the computer science department at Regis College.

"There are plenty of programmers smart enough to do that," he said. "But having the will and the time to pull it off would be hard."

One observer said scalpers could be to blame for the collapse. Many use advanced software that inundates ticketing sites, occasionally overloading them.

"The scalpers obviously have become very sophisticated, and I think they are a part of the reason the system crashed," said Karl Case, economics professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

The team will stick to its plan of selling tickets solely through its Web site - coloradorockies.com.

Crashed soon after 10

Frustrated fans took the Rockies to task Monday after the team bungled online ticket sales despite repeated assurances from club officials that its Web site could handle the expected deluge of traffic.

"Is anyone surprised this happened?" fumed Marshall Aster, of Greenwood Village. "There wasn't a person I spoke to this weekend who didn't think the system was going to crash."

The team's World Series ticketing system, run by Irvine, Calif.-based Paciolan, buckled under the pressure shortly after sales began at 10 a.m. Monday.

Officials from Paciolan referred all questions to the Rockies.

The setback kept fans on edge for the better part of the day and well into the night. Many skipped work to try to secure tickets, while others pulled strings to clear their schedules when tickets initially went on sale.

"This is very frustrating," said Merri Lou Allford, a computer technician who took the day off to buy tickets. "I work in computers so I understand to a certain extent how this could happen. But they should have known about the demand."

The problems seemingly blindsided the team and Major League Baseball officials. Last week, Alves said the team was "comfortable and confident that we can handle the volume of World Series requests." Officials from MLB expressed confidence, as well.

But Alves said Monday that Paciolan, which provides ticketing networks to Major League Baseball and 700 college and professional teams, was "amazed and overwhelmed" with the traffic. The crash affected the company's entire North American system.

Fans show up at ball field

The fan frustration was evident at a midday news conference outside Coors Field, where observers greeted a Rockies spokesman with a chorus of boos after he announced that ticket sales would be suspended. Rockies supporters then began chanting, "We want tickets!"

Denver Police blocked traffic for about two hours on two blocks of Blake Street that run just east of Coors Field.

"People showed up at the ticket window when they couldn't get online," said Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson. "There was some yelling and things of that nature." However, there was no behavior that would have prompted an arrest, he said.

'Lost day' for productivity

Fort Collins resident Vic Hudson said the lack of communication irks him the most. Many fans tried to buy tickets online for hours, unaware the system had crashed. The Rockies didn't announce the problems until more than two hours after sales began.

"It's so frustrating," Hudson said. "These guys made a serious error in judgment."

Some were upset the team abandoned a previous plan to sell a portion of the tickets through a lottery-type system. The Rockies announced last week it would only sell tickets online, saying it was the most fair and equitable method.

Mark Lasser, who works out of his Highland home, said he spent Monday morning "pounding the Web site," before giving up and driving to Coors Field. Frustrated, the 40-year-old salesman waited in a line, hoping the Rockies might decide to sell the tickets at the windows instead.

"They had weeks to figure this out," Lasser said.

Workplace expert John Challenger called it a "lost day" for productivity in Denver.

He didn't venture a guess, but said it's just the start.

"There are night games, and how many people are going to call in sick and come in bleary-eyed because they've been partying and watching the game?" said Challenger, the CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "They've been crying in their beer or they've been celebrating."

The good news is that fans get another opportunity to buy tickets. But after getting a glimpse of the demand on Monday, some aren't optimistic.

"I guess now that all the tickets are still available, everybody still has a chance," Jonathan Leung, a Rockies fan in New York, wrote in an e-mail. "However, I don't have much hope for not only myself but even for local fans who have suffered a lot of heartbreak throughout the years."

Staff writers Joanne Kelley and John Ensslin contributed to this report.

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