Colorado Rockies fans, who have been waiting for generations–or at least part of one generation–to see their team in the World Series, will have to wait another day to get tickets for the series after the team’s Web site buckled under the weight of what Rockies officials say was a deliberate attack on Monday. The team, which will play the Boston Red Sox in the World Series beginning Wednesday in Boston, began selling tickets for games three, four and five of the series at Coors Field in Denver Monday morning. However, fewer than 500 of the nearly 60,000 available tickets were actually sold before the ticketing system crashed while trying to handle a reported 8.5 million hits in about 90 minutes. Rockies officials said the failure was not because of the high volume of traffic, but rather because of what sounds like a DDoS attack.
“Thank you again for your patience tonight and for all our fans, again for their patience on what’s been a difficult day for them and for us also,” team spokesman Jay Alves said in a statement. “Our Web site, I can tell you, and ultimately our fans and our organization, were the victim of an external malicious attack on our Web site that shut down the system that prevented our fans from being able to purchase their World Series tickets.”
The team did not release any other details or give any reasons for its assertion that there was an attack on the site. The Rockies will try again to sell the tickets online on Tuesday, according to a story on Sports Illustrated’s site.
