Buying frenzy for darts tickets

England's Phil Taylor. Photo / AP

The prospect of seeing the world's top darts players compete in New Zealand has caused a buying frenzy before public sales opened that temporarily overwhelmed a ticketing agency.

Players led by Phil "The Power" Taylor, world champion Gary Anderson and World No 1 Michael van Gerwen are to compete in the first Auckland Darts Masters tournament over three days from August 28 at The Trusts Arena in Auckland.

When priority tickets for The Trusts Arena members went on sale at 10am today, ahead of the public opening, the ticketing agency Eventfinda was overwhelmed, said Trusts Arena chief executive Brian Brake.

"The pre-sale demand was extraordinary - like an AC/DC concert - with thousands trying to buy tickets at once," said Mr Brake.

"It completely took down the Eventfinda website and it took us much longer than we would like to get on top of it.

"People were getting a blank website not loading properly.

"Some people were getting through all right, which is why we decided to push pre-sales back 45 minutes to 2pm in order to make it fair for everyone and to give the agent a chance to get on top of the problem."

Mr Brake said the arena had a seating capacity of 5000 a day for the event and was not yet fully booked.

It is the first time that Auckland has been included in the PDC World Series of Darts and it will be televised live worldwide.

PDC is extending the world series to have events held in Dubai next month and Japan in June and during August in Australia - in Perth and Sydney, and then in Auckland for August 28, 29 and 30.

Other PDC stars coming to Auckland are Adrian Lewis, Peter Wright, James Wade, Raymond van Barneveld and Stephen Bunting.

In the tournament's first round, they will be drawn against eight Oceanic qualifiers.