Co-op Live: We had a go at getting pre-sale tickets as Nicki Minaj, Slipknot and Noah Kahan went on sale

Wednesday was a fairly big day for Manchester's new arena, with four events going on presale at Co-op Live. Early access tickets to Nicki Minaj, Slipknot, Noah Kahan and Hits Radio Live were all made available from 9am on December 13.  

Getting gig tickets can sometimes be a tense and frustrating experience, with high-demand threatening to leave you disappointed. Efforts have also been made in recent years by ticketing sites to avoid touts buying up tickets and selling them on for extortionate prices - Liam Gallagher fans experienced this earlier in the year. 

With the anticipation building towards the new arena opening, which is due to be in April 2024, tickets are selling for all of the events already announced. To see how the pre-sale ticket process through Co-op Membership worked, we gave it a go for Slipknot, given it's something a lot of Mancs will be tackling in the weeks and months to come.

The venue provides plenty of information on how to get ready for presale windows. This includes making sure you are a Co-op Member and that you have a Ticketmaster account. With both of these boxes ticked, the countdown to 9am was on. 

I got ready to join the queue, and had a slight scare when wi-fi dropped out in what was some truly terrible timing. You start off through the Co-op App - make sure that’s downloaded and ready to go before the key time- and then you can scroll through the events which are coming up at the arena. 

When you select yours, you’ll be then directed to the Ticketmaster page for the event you are buying tickets for. This is when you’ll be added to the queue, which of course will place you in a virtual line which could be thousands long.

My signal issue knocked me back, but at just after 9.15am I was placed into the ticket selection page. By that point, standing tickets had all gone with no results available when I tried searching. The page is very clear though, and gives you several minutes to pick if you want seated, standing or VIP tickets. I’d recommend deciding what type of tickets you want before heading into the Ticketmaster page. 

There were plenty of seated tickets left, priced between around £55 and £75 depending on where in Co-op Live you would want to be. The process was smooth and took away some of the stress of getting tickets. Being a Co-op Member is a great way of getting on board for pre-sale too, and feels far fairer than occasions where bands say you need to buy an album or other merchandise in order to get pre-sale codes. 

Here's hoping other Mancs share out experience given the line up of acts already announced for 2024 and 2025.