tickets and how it could be done better

[Guest]

If you had to queue up at a HMV which opened at 9am to buy one what time would you start queuing.

 

9am

three Tuesdays before

[morph100]

I reckon I would go for 24 hours at the least popular HMV within a 50 mile radius of my house

[eFestivals]

One thing that I would be interested in is a charity presale - for example, you could volunteer for Oxfam for, say, 40 hours over the course of the year (you'd have to complete before T Day) in exchange for access to a presale, or you could raise a certain amount of money for Water Aid etc etc.

I think this would be a good way of giving dedicated Glasto goers an edge on getting tickets - those who are desperate to go to Glasto would happily give up their time to volunteer or raise money, and it would be helping charity so very much in the Glastonbury spirit.

Nice idea, but richies would invent fund raising and just pay more for a ticket.

[Pear_Cider]

Nice idea, but richies would invent fund raising and just pay more for a ticket.

 

Exactly that.

[wilson123]

This will be my sixth - I missed 2010 because of a wedding clash - but I probably have less right than someone who hasn't been. 

 

If I think back to my first in '09, I was 25, I'd been to Reading festival a few times and a few Euro festivals and luckily got a ticket. I remember the excitement driving over in the night, seeing the Pyramid light the sky, joining the convoy of cars making the same trek. 

 

That feeling of seeing the pyramid in person - ok it's not my favourite thing now but at the time, it was the icon of Glastonbury Festival. 

 

I remember exploring the green fields for the first time, seeing the stone circle at 4am for the first time, watching the sun come up; experience Shangri La the first time is something that I'll never forget (thankfully I have the photos to remind me).

 

I'm a very lucky sod to be going again but to install a tier system and drastically reduce people having the opportunity to experience these same firsts I have - just no.

[Thearg]

If you had to queue up at a HMV which opened at 9am to buy one what time would you start queuing.

 

Now.

[myers]

Have they gone on record as saying that? I've done this for over a decade now and don't remember seeing such an interview, so would love to see the source.

haha, thats bollox ! 

[hfuhruhurr]

what would be fairer to all (I'm thinking those with any kind of typing/co-ordination difficulties) would be if people could enter all the details in advance and then the hell that is T-Day is just getting "in" to confirm you want what you requested. A simple code to type in - none of the amount of data I'd imagine someone with issues has to worry about.

[st dan]

I think the rise in the house music scene has undoubtably lead to an increase in demand for tickets.

I have no interest in the type of 'music' at all, but by all accounts the line up for this genre is very impressive, including all the after hours stuff. Now I do know that this scene is very popular at present and must be having an influence on the tickets. I know a large group of people who going in 2016, who really have no interest in any other music and would never have previously thought of going to Glastonbury ahead of Creamfields or the like.

There are loads of festivals throughout the UK and Europe which cater for this type of music and scene, now it seems that Glastonbury is being taken over by this too.

Edited October 4, 2015 by st dan

[mpsamuels]

haha, thats bollox !

Call bollox if you like.

If I remember rightly it was 2013. After the initial sale, that took the usual slaughter for being a shambles as it was at the time, the festival office welcomed suggestions from the public for feedback and improvement ideas.

Those who suggested a ballot, as I did, received an email in reply stating they had considered it, were aware of its merits, but didn't consider it a good idea for the festival atmosphere. If I still have the response and can track it down, I'll post it in full.

[UEF]

If you had to queue up at a HMV which opened at 9am to buy one what time would you start queuing.

 

I'd stop going.

 

It's hard enough getting a ticket, queueing up and getting on and offsite as it is without extra hassle.

 

If they moved to an 'offline' sale they could stick the festival up their arse, frankly

[sime]

If you had to queue up at a HMV which opened at 9am to buy one what time would you start queuing.

I remember the good old days of walking into HMV a week or two before the festival started and buying a ticket. No stress, no shaky hands filling in details on a screen. It was as easy as buying a loaf of bread. Edited October 4, 2015 by sime

[DeanoL]

Nice idea, but richies would invent fund raising and just pay more for a ticket.

 

But then, you can already do that can't you? If you can afford to part with the best part of a grand you can buy spare company hospitality tickets, or the glamping-with-ticket options.

 

[glasto-worker]

I remember the good old days of walking into HMV a week or two before the festival started and buying a ticket. No stress, no shaky hands filling in details on a screen. It was as easy as buying a loaf of bread.

 

Yes I know - in the 80's its was CND Shops and Virgin records but in later years they expanded it

 

I include this one as its possible to read the list - its from 1995

 

the last time I walked into a CND Shop was in 1987 - tickets were £21 and they were handed over on the spot.

 

[Eron]

Greetings all. I am new to the site and new to Glasto. 2016 will be our first year heading to the Fest. 

 

We are regulars at Bonnaroo and a bunch of other US festivals (Spend a week at SXSW, etc). 

 

Anyways, here is my ticketing suggestion and I am borrowing a bit from Afropunk and the Global Citizen Fest. 

 

I think 20,000 or so tickets should be available via a point system. That by doing charitable works or donating to charity that you earn points (Heavily waited towards works). If you have the top 20,000 in points at a cut off time then you get to secure your tickets, though you still pay the regular price. 

 

#1 this lets people who really really want to go secure a ticket. 

#2 this helps the environment, world, etc via the charities involved. 

#3 Eliminate Celebs and Wealthy people getting tickets the normal way, they instead have to donate a ton of money in order to get tickets through this process. 

 

The remainder of the tickets can use the current system. That way other people can take their annual shot at going. 

 

Anyways, That is my idea. 

 

We were lucky enough to secure tickets this year and will be heading there for our 10th wedding anniversary. We honeymooned at Roo in 06. Next year we are going bigger and doing Roo and Glasto. 

 

--Eron. 

Edited October 5, 2015 by Eron

[GoonerRob]

Sell em at your local record store,one person one ticket, at four in the morning on a wednesday in January.

 

That'll sort the wheat from the chaff.

 

What's a local record store?

[Smeble]

There's a perception outside of the festival community that there's no point trying for tickets as they are impossible to get and that the same people 'in the know' get them every year. This is added to by headlines every year that only care about how quickly they sell out etc.

A loyalty scheme for regulars would only make this perception worse and in reality would mean considerably fewer tickets for everyone else.( who have just as much right to go)

So what? I hear you say, well there probably aren't enough 'regulars' to sustain Glastonbury and its a fine line between generating the hype to sell out and turning people off a festival. If enough people think it's not worth bothering trying for tickets then all of a sudden it stops selling out in 30 min, then you get headlines about the demise of Glastonbury and things start to snowball.

Add that to the rumours that Michael Eavis is looking for a way out of doing the festival( I'm local to the site and there's all sorts of rumours floating around from just knocking it on the head, moving it to the bath and west show ground and 'selling' it to someone else and moving to a different part of the country) and I think you risk turning it into a clique club and killing it completely.

Glastonbury is a huge operation, he loses the use of his farm( and 2 others) for a minimum 2 months every year, if the weather is bad then it's even longer, the clean up is a nightmare, just getting all the pegs and other metal off the farm is a major task involving people scouring the fields in large groups and tractors with huge magnets on them. Rather than looking after regulars big businesses lifeblood is new blood.

[Don Hagliatelli]

Each year we see a lot of suggestions that some sort of ballot system would be fairer / better.

 

On top of this it is often suggested that people who went last year are not allowed to enter the draw for this year – or some variation on that theme.

 

On the surface, this does seem like a good idea. It could give everybody who wants one an equal chance of getting at ticket and then preventing them from going the following year would mean that more people get to experience the festival.

 

 

Any such system would rely on its ability to prevent people from creating multiple accounts to keep it fair.

 

As somebody who works in IT and who has experience designing systems which uniquely identify customers and try to prevent duplicates being created, I think this would be very difficult to do.

 

How could this be done?

 

 

Currently you need the following to register to try and buy a ticket:-

 

Name (could be fake, or even a variation of the same name e.g. Bob Smith, Robert Smith, Robert A Smith…)

Address / Post Code (this is needed to receive your ticket but you can register multiple people at the same address)

E-Mail Address (you can have as many as you want)

Photo (You could use different photo of the same person and it would be very difficult to match these)

 

 

Based on the data above, there’s no way to reliably identify duplicates and prevent them from being created. Any attempt to do so would potentially create false positives which would prevent legitimate people from creating accounts.

 

 

In the UK, it is very difficult to create a system to uniquely identify somebody as there isn’t a central registry that everybody is on which is available to check against.

 

Passport Number, Driving Licence, National Insurance Number – not everybody has these, and even if they did they cannot easily be checked to ensure they are for the correct individual.

 

Bank details? You can have multiple bank accounts and again it is not easy to verify ownership of a bank account.

 

Any services to check detail which do exist will likely cost money to use and there will be some manual intervention required to deal with exceptions and errors.

 

Consider that whatever solution was used, you will have hundreds of thousands registrations to validate.

 

To do this properly you would need to set up offices with computers, phones and document handling facilities.

 

The cost would be large, which would have to be borne by the customer.

 

Plus, people from outside the UK can register  - how would these people be validated?

 

 

My point is that any ballot style system would need to ensure that all entrants are real, unique individuals in order to be fair.

 

If there are any loopholes that allow people to create fake or duplicate entries then the system would not be fair.

 

If you prevent somebody from going 2 years in a row, many of them would just create another account to try and get a ticket.

 

Plenty of people would create multiple accounts in an attempt to improve their chances of getting a ticket.

 

People already use multiple devices, browsers and windows to increase their chances in the current system.

 

 

In my opinion, it would be difficult and expensive to introduce such a system and even then it would likely contain loopholes which would be open to abuse.

 

The current system has its flaws, although you only need register once you could have multiple people attempting to get you a ticket – which obviously increases your chances.

 

Would a ballot system which is open to abuse actually be any fairer?

 

 

At the end of the day, demand far exceeds supply and so a lot of people will be disappointed no matter what system you implement.

 

 

I’m interested to hear peoples thoughts on this. Especially if anybody has a suggestion for a ballot system that could be run in a fair manner.

[giantkatestacks]

Really though everyone who wants to can go every year without fail if they want if they're prepared to work and give back. Or do something creative or get involved in some way and make an effort.

If you dont want to do any of that then you have to take your chances with see tickets or pay an absolute fortune.

I see the same veterans year after year. Why? They're all working.

[guypjfreak]

theres some great ideas here and we wont agree on all things BUT can we at least agree that the re-opining of the registration AFTER ticket day IE now should NOT happen ..

people have had ALL year to reg up and imo if you havent done so unlucky....as all the people that didnt get tix on sunday now have to compete with a load more people and i dont think thats fair

[incident]

theres some great ideas here and we wont agree on all things BUT can we at least agree that the re-opining of the registration AFTER ticket day IE now should NOT happen ..

No.

I can't agree with that at all - everyone has to start some time. I don't see any good reason why it should make a difference when they registered. Especially considering that this year there'll be people out there who didn't realise their old (2009) registration was no longer valid until it was too late.

[Untz]

Registrations are there to stop touting, not to stop genuine people buying.

 

I'm quite happy to take my chances in April with freshly registered people. Better than competing with all of those who buy a ticket "just in case" in October.

 

I take that back if "big band with dedicated fanbase" are announced pre-registration closure though.

[DeanoL]

Each year we see a lot of suggestions that some sort of ballot system would be fairer / better.

 

How could this be done?

 

You may be over-thinking it. You enter the ballot in late April, entry is open for just one day 9am-9pm. Registration works as normal. When you enter, you put in your card details. The draw happens the following day, if you're successful, the card is charged. There are no refunds on tickets.

 

So you could enter five times, but if you win five times you're paying for five tickets, four of which are useless to anyone as they have your photo etc. on. It's not a flawless system but it seems better than trying to enforce it through technology. And if you want to pay £1000 for a ticket you can get one anyway.

 

[tweed1981]

No offence but that is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard.

[UEF]

theres some great ideas here and we wont agree on all things BUT can we at least agree that the re-opining of the registration AFTER ticket day IE now should NOT happen ..

people have had ALL year to reg up and imo if you havent done so unlucky....as all the people that didnt get tix on sunday now have to compete with a load more people and i dont think thats fair

 

You keep missing the key point here - the registration doesn't "re-open", it closes for a period while you couldn't reasonably vet the registrations in time for the sale. Otherwise, the registration lasts all year round.