YLE has been monitoring the appearence of tickets in Huuto.net. Lippupalvelu handled the selling on Sunday by phone and in their 60 selling points. It took between four and 20 minutes depending on the selling point for final tickets to sell out, and less than three hours to the final packages, although as esctoday.com exclusively reported yesterday, two blocks of tickets were discovered for the final and quickly snapped up, mostly by our readers. In more good news for readers of esctoday.com – Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat referred directly to their reactions in today's edition!

In a boost to thereaders of esctoday.comwho every year feel that they have a mountain to climb to get their hands on tickets to the Eurovision Song Contest, we are happy to report that Finland's largest newspaper has closely been following your opinions in the reactions section! Today Helsingin Sanomat reported on the front page of the culture section that "in esctoday.com the comments by fans were not very flattering to finns about how we handled this".

Regarding problems with ticket sales, YLE’s Pirjo Talvio said“If the rules and instructions have not been followed we must do some internal investigation…However, it was Lippupalvelu who took care of the selling and YLE cannot interfere in their business.”

For now YLE is not very worried about the black market, as it was expected to happen as always, but they keep close eye on the situation. At the moment less than 20 sellers are offering ticket with prices that vary from their original price to doubled ones. If the number would increase significally what YLE or Lippupalvelu will and can do has not been yet discussed. It is clearly stated behind the ticket that selling it again is not allowed without Lippupalvelu’s permission so selling them on line is basicly illegal.

Also the Finnish tax officers might be interested on the income one makes that way.Lippupalvelu received heavy criticism already on Sunday for their actions. As their selling points differ from counters inside supermarkets to real offices and have different operating ways some ticket buyers felt they were in unequal position; some places used queuing numbers, some had just the “first come first served” rush to the counter, some let people buy 5 tickets, some just one

Meanwhile some happy fans have informed us that they have received their e-tickets already.YLE is still satisfied for the telephone operation as the system never collapsed despite the record number of calls, over one million in the first three hours. However, most callers would have preferred to buy a ticket, not to be part of a record breaking number of callers on lines testing its ability!