Wimbledon organisers have defended their online ticket sale amid complaints from a number of disappointed fans.

With spectator numbers not decided until this week, Wimbledon abandoned their usual ballot and queuing system in favour of putting tickets on sale online at 1pm on Thursday.

Chief executive Sally Bolton expressed confidence in the infrastructure on Wednesday but social media was quickly full of messages from frustrated fans who found themselves either in queues in excess of 100,000 people or unable to buy tickets if they did make it to the front.

A central complaint was around a unique code sent to those who registered on the myWimbledon website, which was deemed necessary to prevent people buying more than two tickets each.

But only those who had opted to receive communications from the website received their code, leading to immense frustration for a proportion of the nearly one million people who registered.

A statement from the All England Club read: "As expected, we received enormous demand for this initial sale of tickets for the Championships 2021.

"In order to participate in the sale, guests needed to be registered with myWimbledon, and opted in to receive marketing communications from us in their myWimbledon profile so that we could legally contact them.

"We issued codes to each guest who had registered, and opted in, so that we could protect the purchase of only one pair of tickets per guest. These codes were unique to each individual and were all issued by 12.50pm, ahead of the sale commencing at 13.00.

"The vast majority of guests have had no issues and successfully purchased tickets. We appreciate the disappointment of those who were not able to get tickets on this occasion, but there will be additional opportunities to purchase tickets for this year's Championships.

"We encourage all those interested to make sure they are opted in to receive marketing communications from us."

More tickets will go on sale on Friday, with the tournament getting under way on June 28.