Glastonbury geek question - odds

[Koroviev]

Proper geek question, but wonder if anybody can evaluate the sort of odds you have on grabbing a Glastonbury ticket?

 

Was my first time last year and managed to get one relatively straight forward and it seems like a lot of people on here never really miss out, is it really as hard/nerve wracking as we get the night before?

 

Hoping last year wasn't just beginner's luck and I can grab my hands on another batch tomorrow!

[Gnomicide]

A lot on here get them in the end but that can be either resale or 'secret' resales.

The thing is, you really want to get one in the first sale or it means a long, long wait through the winter, not knowing if you are going or not.

As for the odds? Christ knows. Said to be a million registrations but that was before this years pre 2010 cull plus there are many duplicates etc. and who knows how many of those registrations are trying this year?

At a complete guess, I'd go 3-1.

[Koroviev]

A lot on here get them in the end but that can be either resale or 'secret' resales.

The thing is, you really want to get one in the first sale or it means a long, long wait through the winter, not knowing if you are going or not.

As for the odds? Christ knows. Said to be a million registrations but that was before this years pre 2010 cull plus there are many duplicates etc. and who knows how many of those registrations are trying this year?

At a complete guess, I'd go 3-1.

 

Fair enough.

 

Fingers crossed, but only out of the 5 only 3 of us can try but they're at the same location so basically only really the equivalent of 2.

 

Hoping I get through but feeling slightly pessimistic as last year I was on a non-commercial ISP compared to (ugh) Virgin Media this year. 

 

Do you think turning my VPN will make a difference? 

[Gnomicide]

I reckon it's all just luck.

[incident]

That's way too complicated a question with way too many unknowns to really give you the type of answer I think you're looking for, but here's my best shot at it:

Fundamentally, none of us really know for sure how many unique registered people are trying for tickets each year - ie how many tickets they'd sell if there was no capacity limit. The number could be 140,000, it could be 500,000 - realistically it's likely to be somewhere between the two.

The Festival will have a better idea of it than we do, as they'll know how many new registrations are being submitted each year, what percentage of tickets sold are new registrations, etc so they can make an educated guess but even then, most of the failed attempts won't get as far as putting in a reg number so the Festival mostly knows how many people are hammering the ticket site and that can be a deceptive number - on my own, I'll probably count as about 6 unique people. After the sale they'll throw out some random number to the media "a million people trying for tickets" but that number won't mean much as it'll have no context.

The odds would also depend on how aggressive you are in trying.. Someone who's sat there ready to go constantly refreshing from the moment the sale starts to the bitter end will have a much better chance then someone who wakes up at half 9, curses their alarm clock, then starts late (which is pretty much what happened to me when I failed in October 2013).

That's all specific to the initial October sale though. Remember that's only one way in, and for the people on here especially (ie the obsessives), we don't give up that easily. If I don't get a ticket tomorrow, then I'll still go to the Festival some how.

There's a re-sale in April - generally considered to be an easier task than the main sale. Then there's likely to be a secret re-sale in May - in past years people on here who are still ticketless have set up page monitoring, and email/text/facebook chains to ensure they get in and to help each other out so that they all know as soon as the May tickets go on sale.

Then there's plenty opportunities to volunteer at the festival - 24 hours of your time and you're free to enjoy the rest of the weekend. Several thousand places will become available between now and April, and some ticketless folks will choose to do that - when I missed out in October 2013 I volunteered for Oxfam instead of waiting for the resale.

So the short version - nobody knows but patience and persistence is usually rewarded.

[wilem]

There is no luck, only skill and determination.

[Bisque]

Even military like precision fails. Friends help.

[FuzzyDunlop]

Depends how many people are online, how many people you have online and how many times everyone hits f5.

Probably about 1000 (times I hit f5 x 6 people trying for me = 6000)

300000 trying (at an average of the same 1000 times trying) =

3,000,000

6000/3,000,000

So

6/3000 so each f5 is roughly...

500/1 going to work.

If 300,000 apply and only 120,000 can buy a ticket, then it is just better than 3/1 chance to get a ticket.

Edited October 4, 2015 by FuzzyDunlop

[tweed1981]

Asked this in another thread, it interests me. As others have said it's impossible to know precisely. If would be handy to know how many people are registered for a start, obviously Glastonbury are unlikely to ever confirm that exactly. If it's a million live registrations then all of those people will not be applying. Straight off the top of my head I know four mates who tried for a couple of years and now haven't bothered for a couple, anecdotal i know but you could strip a lot of that million out, I'd say probably a third of all registrations would be trying (complete guess) so let's say 330k going for tickets.

Now of course if we all individually sat there on one computer each and could buy just 1 ticket and refreshed the same amount of times in theory then our odds would be just over 1 in 2, not bad. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that, people have multiple devices and tickets get sold in groups of 6. Based on an interview See tickets did a couple of years back they suggested a million people were trying to get through. If I was going to make a big assumption about this number (assuming firstly it's even true) then I would say that would be based on individual IP addresses, although it may well not be. Going back to the 330k number this would suggest that roughly, each person is trying from three devices, so you could say that if you are also trying from three devices then the odds should go back to just over 1 in 2. The thing that clouds this though is that tickets are sold in groups of up to 6, obviously everybody will not buy 6, but it must average out to at least 4, so there are not 135k opportunities to get through there are actually only about 34k slots available. You can't then account for people trying for each other, people trying for people who aren't even going, big groups of people that stop once somebody gets their ticket.

All in its impossible to tell, I can't sleep,I reckon the guess about 1in 3 is about right, and hammer f5

[tweed1981]

Depends how many people are online, how many people you have online and how many times everyone hits f5.

Probably about 1000 (times I hit f5 x 6 people trying for me = 6000)

300000 trying (at an average of the same 1000 times trying) =

3,000,000

6000/3,000,000

So

6/3000 so each f5 is roughly...

500/1 going to work.

If 300,000 apply and only 120,000 can buy a ticket, then it is just better than 3/1 chance to get a ticket.

I think this shows how it's very difficult to work out.

If each F5 has a 1 in 500 chance, if you do indeed hit F5 1000 times, in theory you should get through, twice, the same way you'd expect to win a lottery that was 500/1 if you bought 1000 tickets.

Not debunking your numbers, just suggesting that there are lots of other variables that make it hard to work out exact odds.

[stuartbert two hats]

There was no secret resale for 2015.

[Platt073]

Are you so sure? It was secret!