'Avengers: Endgame' smashes 'Star Wars' pre-sale record as touts offer tickets for $9000 on eBay

Avengers: Endgame has smashed the ticket pre-sale record set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the first 24 hours on sale.

In fact, it beat the pre-sales for Star Wars in the US within the first six hours, as websites crashed and screenings sold out.

Read more: Captain Marvel soars past $1 billion

Erik Davies, the managing editor of US ticketing site Fandango, tweeted that he’d ‘never seen anything like this before’ in the company’s 19-year history.

“I hesitate to call #AvengersEndgame the most anticipated movie of all time, but in all honesty the numbers this one is putting up are extraordinary,” he said.

“I have been doing this for a good while – you all know this – and I have never seen anything like this before.”

Tickets for sold-out shows are now being hawked on eBay for ridiculous sums of cash.

One auction on the site has a pair of tickets at the AMC on 84th Street in New York, middle row seats, for just over $9000 (around £6,800, and it has a bid on it, though it remains to be seen whether the buyer actually pays up).

Read more: Booking sites crash under pressure of Avengers: Endgame demand

But tickets do seem to be changing hands for several hundred dollars on the site.

The movie is opening in all territories at the same time (though a day early in the UK) on April 26, meaning that it’s feasible that the movie will be the first movie to break through $1 billion on its opening weekend.