Crowded House was a band that was never about the numbers but even journalism's basic grasp of mathematics would tell you that 100,000 into 5000 or even 10,000 won't go easily.

So it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that tickets for November's Crowded House shows at the Sydney Opera House forecourt – their numbers limited to 5000 people each night – 20 years after their Farewell to the World show on the same spot played to more than 100,000 people, sold out in minutes. Possibly even seconds.

Certainly within minutes of the tickets going on sale the price for those tickets, which initially retailed from about $120, were going for anything from $500 to $900 on the official resale site.

The resale site is in theory a way to avoid scalpers, being a sanctioned offshoot of the ticketing agency, in this case Ticketmaster, which describes its site as "an open marketplace for the sale and purchase of live event tickets. The majority of tickets may exceed face value and prices are set by the Sellers of the tickets."

The question of who else but scalpers would already be on-selling their tickets within minutes of buying them may be worth asking at some point.

As usual with ticket sales of major shows, while some people were able to get through and buy tickets, many, many more were stuck in slow moving queues, had their attempts timed out or were told there were no tickets available. Complaints quickly followed.

smh.com.au