System design interview question
Design TicketMaster (High-Concurrency Ticket Booking)
A ticket-booking system like TicketMaster sells a fixed seat inventory to thousands of users who all arrive at the exact moment the sale opens. The challenge is fairness, exact inventory accounting (never double-book a seat), and survival of a 100x traffic spike when a popular tour goes on sale. The design combines a virtual waiting room to absorb the initial crowd, an inventory service with strong consistency, time-bounded seat holds, and aggressive fraud prevention to keep bots from sweeping the floor before fans can click.
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