Between the last ticket sold and the doors opening, something almost always comes back — someone cancels, a payment is refunded. Without a waiting list that place falls into a hole. With one, there is a queue of people who hear about it straight away.
The last ticket is gone
The ticket type fills up and can no longer be bought. A sign-up button appears underneath it by itself — there is nothing for you to switch on.
A visitor signs up
Name and email address, nothing more. No account, no payment up front. Anyone who changes their mind takes themselves off again in one click.
A place frees up
Refund a ticket and that place counts again immediately — and whoever has waited longest gets an email.
The waiting list belongs to the ticket type and shows up exactly when there is nothing left to buy.
As soon as the last place is sold, the platform blocks sales of that type and the sign-up option appears on your event page. That happens with its own limit, with a shared capacity, and when every time slot is full or past. A ticket type without a limit can never free anything up, so the button stays away.
Name, email address, submit — no account, no deposit. The same address can only be on a ticket type’s list once, so clicking five times does not buy five places. That same screen is where somebody takes themselves off again.
Refund a ticket and the platform checks for people waiting there and then. Separately, a check runs every fifteen minutes across every ticket type with sign-ups. Whoever joined first is emailed first — with the event, the ticket type and a link to the event page in it.
A sold-out ticket type, the sign-up form and the confirmation — in one recording.
A waiting list only makes sense if “sold out” is actually true. That is why capacity runs through the same books as your sales, down to the last place.
Give every ticket type its own number: 200 standing, 40 VIP, 60 early birds. Leave the field empty and there is no limit at all — that type keeps selling for as long as your event runs, and needs no waiting list.
Adults, children and members all filling the same 300 seats? Attach them to one shared capacity and they add up on a single counter. A limit per type is allowed on top of that — no more than 30 VIP within those 300, for instance.
At checkout the platform locks the counter before the amount is drawn down. Two visitors buying the last ticket in the same second therefore cannot both succeed — that is ruled out technically, not by luck or by paying close attention.
Refund a ticket and the number goes straight back to the ticket type, to the shared capacity and to the time slot in one move. The same happens after a failed or expired payment. The place is genuinely on sale again — and that is the moment the waiting list fires.
Four situations where a waiting list is the difference between an empty seat and one more visitor.
Five hundred tickets, gone before lunch, and then a timeline full of “anyone got a spare?”. You gather that demand in one place instead of in your messages — and every cancellation sends word out by itself.
You cannot add seats, so your maximum is what it is. What you can do is hold on to the people who still want in, so a refund in the week before the show turns into a visitor instead of an empty row.
Fifteen per departure, not sixteen. Once every departure time is full or past, the ticket type counts as sold out and people can sign up in case somebody drops out.
You may let in a thousand, not two thousand. The counter holds that line firmly, and the waiting list catches the people you are forced to turn away — which doubles as an honest demand figure when you apply for more next year.
We would rather be honest now than on the day itself.
The email is a heads-up, not an option on the ticket. The freed place stays on sale for everybody and whoever pays first gets it. That is why no round ever sends more emails than there are places free, up to five per ticket type.
After that one email your sign-up is spent. If you were just too late, you sign up again for the next time. Nobody ends up sitting on a list for years that fires off the odd email.
Signing up and sending the emails happen entirely on their own, but a screen where you browse the list per ticket type or email somebody yourself does not exist yet. If you want those numbers now, just ask us.
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