Within the first hour of advance sales opening, 40,000 Schalke tickets were sold. But not all fans were lucky.

It took only about 90 minutes for the standing-room-only tickets in the North Stand for FC Schalke 04’s nine home games in the second half of the season to sell out. About twelve hours after advance sales began, all single-game ticket allocations for the matches at the Arena are now sold out.

As expected, the rush for tickets was enormous, as some figures show: Around 40,000 tickets were sold in the first hour of advance sales alone. A total of 55,000 club members visited the online store yesterday to try to secure tickets.

“It makes us incredibly proud to see how many Schalke fans want to support our team at home games. This enthusiasm and the enormous demand for tickets are extraordinary and show just how important Schalke 04 is to so many people,” explains Sebastian Buntkirchen, Director of Fan Culture and Sustainability.

Technically, ticket sales went smoothly this year; the servers withstood the rush—thanks in part to specially set up digital queues. This prevented too many people from accessing the ticket portal at the same time and overwhelming the systems. At the peak, shortly after advance sales began at 6 p.m., approximately 34,500 members were in the queue.

However, the result of this massive rush is that not all fans were able to secure tickets for all the games they wanted. “At the same time, we know that with 204,000 club members now, the presale can be a source of frustration and disappointment for some if they can’t get a ticket despite their best efforts. We fully understand that,” says Buntkirchen.

The Schalke Ticket Exchange can help at short notice

Even members who came up empty-handed during the presale can still hope for remaining tickets. Small batches of tickets are periodically made available in the shop—for example, in the area surrounding the visitors’ section. If the visiting clubs do not use their full away-ticket allocation, some tickets will go on general sale at short notice. Tickets are also frequently available on the S04 Ticket Exchange.

Tickets for the opta data Family Section and fans with disabilities, as well as matchday programs, will go on sale at a later date—only after the exact times of the games have been scheduled.