Harry Styles fans snap up world tour tickets in seconds

Harry Styles fans have smashed ticket sales records by snapping up advanced seats for his upcoming world tour in seconds.

Ticketmaster bosses, who oversaw sales for the One Direction star's 13-date North American tour, claim seven fans used their new Verified Fan sign-up system for every ticket available.

All available tickets for 29 shows dotted around the world were gone in less than a minute.

This breaks the record for fan-to-ticket sign-ups on Ticketmaster's anti-scalper initiative.

Styles has also announced 10 shows in Europe and six dates in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Japan to support his self-titled new album, which is released next week (12May17).

Styles is the latest artist to try out Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan platform, which requires fans to sign up in advance to purchase tickets, weeding out accounts created by scalpers and resellers looking to flip the tickets for a huge profit. Both Ed Sheeran and Twenty One Pilots have used Verified Fan to power their ticket sales in recent months.

The Sign of the Times singer kicks off his world tour on 19 September (17) at The Masonic in San Francisco.