DeanoL

It's an interesting idea which runs into the problem that having a load of people all trying to login at 9am potentially creates the same overloaded server issue you have at the moment. So you'd be refreshing to even get the chance to login. But the question is how much of the current "holding screen" system is because the system *can't* go any fast, and how much of it is because Glasto want the ticket sale to last around an hour and so throttle it.

Interestingly, with a ballot system they'd actually know what the actual demand for the festival was. Much of that fear they have about 2008 is driven by the fact that one of the big downsides currently for the festival is they have no way to gauge demand. Yes, they know how many connections are being made to try and buy tickets, and they know how many people are registered, but that's a far cry from actually knowing what the demand is. Will have to agree to disagree on the media boost from the ticket sale. There are plenty of shows that sell out in minutes these days and they don't get news coverage. I I think the coverage the Glasto sale gets is because of it's cultural position in the UK (driven by the BBC coverage) not the other way around. Same reason you'll see coverage of the Taylor Swift tour selling out in minutes but not if Bad Bunny does the same. I do agree they'll do everything they can to keep demand high, but that's also why I think they'll change the ticket system over the next 5-10 years. Because they don't look at this as "will the next festival sell as fast as possible?" - they look at it from a much longer term point of view, and there will be concerns about touting creeping back in and the long term impacts of most tickets going to well organised groups and those using third party services. Won't necessarily be a ballot mind. I'd argue a ballot could work and many of the objections to it are ill-founded, but it's not the only solution or the best. Glastonbury were one of the first to do "photo printed on ticket" to eliminate touting and would certainly not put it past them to come up with something similarly innovative.

It's purely anecdotal. No-one has data. But having done every single sale since 2003, and have been on this forum and predecessors reading the reactions to everything, I sense that I have a feel for it. For sure if I decide to go again, I'll use a small bot farm to get tickets. But this is a discussion forum, I'm happy to hear why I might be wrong, no-one can prove anything either way. Hell I thought demand would be down this year and was totally wrong on that too. I *want* to hear about why people think differently and different takes on this. It's why I'm here. No interest at all in convincing people that I'm right, but I'd assume others here are interested in hearing different points of view as well. Peak fairness was, of course, 2008.

Possibly people trying to establish credentials but not give out something that might actually work next year or in the resale, so they can set up scam sites for those sales and redirect people to them, now this is entering the consciousness of people who know enough to follow the instructions, but not enough to understand how it works or protect against any risks.

I was baffled at the point you made about how people would stop trying after failing in the ballot for a few years on the bounce. Which didn't explain why that'd be any different than people stopping after failing in the ticket sale for a few years. While I think you have a small point on the media point of view, I think if the festival is actually as oversubscribed as it presents, then "1 million people sign up for Glastonbury ballot" is still a big story. But I also think you're massively overstating by how much that is driving ticket sales, compared to say, the blanket BBC coverage during the weekend itself.

Yep, it's weird to see people talking about how changing the system would ruin the vibe, when people have been moaning about large groups of rowdy young lads ruining the vibe in recent years. (Admittedly, they may be different people).

The devil you know is on the way out. That's the point I'm trying to make. There was no major problem with the system this year, or the last few years, probably not next year either. But it's going in one direction. People have realised that you have the best chance if you form a large syndicate of people going, or get loads of people to help you. That's how you effectively "game" the system. This is going to scale up, more people will be doing it, others will spot a commercial opportunity to sell you bots that will try and get tickets for you or even people in China to do it. It started happening a few years ago, was much more prevalent this year. I expect it's only going in one direction. The current system is on the verge of being broken. It's not broken yet, at all. That's a few years off. But I can see the writing on the wall and it's not just closing a few loopholes. It's a fundamental problem that you can't really do anything to block large group syndicates in the current system (even if you wanted to) and if you can't/don't block that, you also can't block bot/people farms either because they present identical to large group syndicates to your system. This stuff has always happened, but it does seem like we've hit a tipping point this year. (And I say all this as someone who tried for tickets for a friend of a friend so experienced the sale, but never had any intention of going this year, likely never will again to be honest, so I don't have any skin in this game, I'm just fascinated by it)

You'd have a different news story that was "1 million people entered the ballot for Glastonbury tickets" instead. But I agree it might not land in quite the same way. I'm baffled by your other two comments though. Why are people not losing interest after several years of trying for tickets and failing to get them at the moment? Why does a ballot mean more people lose interest? It'd go the other way surely - it requires less effort for a ballot (which as others have pointed out, has its own drawbacks) but that means people are more likely to give it a go anyway? The tickets are still going to be as hard to get as before, because you're still going to have more demand than supply. Ballot or current system. I think that's a legit concern but then you already have a third of people on site being crew who have likely been before, so there's some balance.

Nah you'd just put your card details in when you entered the ballot and if successful you'd get charged. It's a system used by plenty of other events and it works. It's not perfect, has its own issues of course, but no more than the existing system does.

But people are also saying a ballot would make it harder to get tickets... so I'm not sure how the "interest would dwindle" thing would work. I think that's more likely with the current progression of things, to be honest. With a ballot your chance of a ticket might be 1 in 5 or whatever but you'd know you always have a chance. Right now we're already starting to hear "if you're not in a big group, may as well not bother" which will mean more people switch to big groups, which makes it harder for anyone else, and which will lead to essentially reverse touting, where people sell bot/people farms as ways of helping you secure tickets. That's way more off-putting than a system people can actually understand.

Because long term demand will drop if people think there is "no chance" of getting tickets unless they have a special system or big group.

If the festival don't care about fairness and just want to sell all the tickets, why do they run a massively complex and costly registration system with photos just to stop touting?

At £400 per ticket the notion that a ballot would lead to people who weren't really bothered either way still buying tickets seems daft to me. May have been a good argument when tickets were £150 but I don't think it stands up anymore.

Probably doesn't help that so many events are so hard to get tickets for now, Glastonbury is no longer the anomaly. It's every big tour. People know what to do because they've been practicing with tickets for Taylor Swift etc.

Well I think most people just end up being in the group of someone else who is co-ordinating, which is why they instantly go to "it's easy". Try being the person coordinating the groups for 24+ people and I promise after the first week you'll be going "so how complicated is this DNS stuff then?" 😄

I disagree hugely on that. The tech is basic and can be taught fairly easily. The skills to organise large groups of people are rarer.

I don't think it's about criticism so much as that you're right - that approach has gone mainstream now. Which yes, has the side effect of making it harder for those that have been doing it for years through this forum, which some are miffed about. But there's a larger point about how that influences the ticket buying process as a whole, because it's possible we've hit a sort of critical mass where enough people are doing it that more and more people will do it, and it'll end up being the only viable way to get tickets.

I would say the skill required to gather and coordinate a group of 64 people to all work together is loads harder than the skill needed to mess around with the hosts file. I could teach most people the latter, including the theory behind it, in a half hour chat. Of course, reality is most people in big groups are not coordinating 64 people. One of the other 63 people is!

Also I did just google "glastonbury ticket helper service" and the first result was Bark telling me that's a service they offer...

Yet. I think we'll see it much more commercialised next year.

It's more there's no fundamental difference between the two. I don't have a problem with people doing the whole huge group thing, but when those same people get annoyed that others are using bots or using the DNS hack, I just find it a bit hypocritical. Neither is expressly forbidden in the rules anywhere. And if we want to talk about intent, I suspect the festival would rather have neither of them. But it ultimately boils down to "Rewarding effort is good, it should give you an advantage, up to the amount and type of effort I am willing to put in. After that, extra effort is bad or cheating and should be banned."

£500 gives you 50 people trying for you at UK minimum wage. You'd probably get tickets.

Depends if you include "gaming the system" being large groups/syndicates or not. And how large a group does it have to be to count as "gaming" it?

Do you think a greater proportion of tickets went to such folk (and I'm including the "loads of friends in a spreadsheet" as geeks) though than say last year? And do you think that proportion will go up or down next year? I don't expect them to change the whole thing right off next year, but I think this is heading in one direction and I suspect some ticketing changes to happen during the next fallow year.

True. I 100% agree that whatever the system is, ways will be found to game it. But I'd also say we've had the same system for about ten festivals now (most of the 00s there were workarounds or the festival wasn't selling well anyway) and we've only just reached the point where people are really aggressively gaming it. Any system will get gamed, but I'm now at the point I'd agree that a new system might get gamed "less". Like, the stuff being done this year and last was possible back in 2015 but wasn't happening then because... ? I don't know. So while there are always theoretical ways to game the system, if those happen in practice is a different question. And if they happen in practice and *at scale* is also a different question. A reset of the system, requiring new methods for "gaming" might be useful in and of itself, as it will take a good few years for any such methods to start percolating out and becoming more widely used. Doesn't necessarily need to be more secure. Just being different may be sufficient.