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One change I'd make to the festival is....


Leyrulion
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20 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

But if you haven’t got a booking screen and successfully filled out your details, then you don’t have anything to pay for? 2.4m people aren’t all trying to enter their payment details at the same time are they? Because at most there will only ever be about 40K payments to process? 

I'll probably never get it.  Can you show me the small cow again?

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18 minutes ago, Hotchilidog said:

Also given how demand outstrips supply it is about as fair as it can be. I both hate and love the ticketing system that Glastonbury uses.

Yep apart from payment gateway problems I have no complaints about the system. 

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4 minutes ago, Hotchilidog said:

Also given how demand outstrips supply it is about as fair as it can be. I both hate and love the ticketing system that Glastonbury uses.

For all it's faults, its the closest thing to a fair system.

I've been very fortunate in the past, other years not so lucky but all that meant is that I volunteered and had a completely different Glastonbury experience.

 

As for what I'd like to see this year, honestly it would be the spider again.  As much as Pangea was interesting, it just wasn't a patch on that fire breathing fella.

 

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I’d ditch Glastonbury-on-Sea, it should be better this year but I doubt it will ever be essential.

Bring back the Spider.

Create something new to replace the no longer secret Secret Piano Bar & Rabbit Hole.

Make Silver Heyes attractive, so it looks part of something rather than a bunch of random tents.

Control the ever-expanding corporate camps etc outside the perimeter.

Contactless bar payments 

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4 minutes ago, clarkete said:

Isn't that the compromise which prevents the neighbours trying to get the festival shut down as they used to a couple of decades back?

Not so much that exactly - we can split them into 2 categories broadly, and they're fairly easy to identify.

The ones that have access to Hospitality tickets (and sometimes other perks on the festival itself like shuttle buses direct to inside the site) tend to have some form of active relationship with the Festival, and usually offer something more than money in return - most typically they'll let the festival use some of their land, and they'll use the rest for their own glamping operations.

The ones that don't have that relationship are pretty much just other local landowners cashing in. The council have acknowledged in the debrief report that they can have only limited control over these because they're not part of the festival site and not large enough numbers to need licensing, other than if they apply for an alcohol licence.

At least two of the people who've been most active in trying to get the Festival shut down in the past have also fallen into the latter group - at least one has since died and I'm not sure about the other, but being able to profit off the festival never stopped them complaining to the council about it.

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9 minutes ago, clarkete said:

Isn't that the compromise which prevents the neighbours trying to get the festival shut down as they used to a couple of decades back?

Yeah, I mean I get why people don’t like them, but ultimately Glastonbury doesn’t own all the land in the surrounding area. You can’t blame people for wanting to make their own property work for them, and if Glastonbury doesn’t keep them sweet then they could make life very difficult for them. If someone owns a pierce of land near to Glastonbury and wants to utilise it for glamming, I’m not sure what could and should actually be done to stop them. 

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1 minute ago, incident said:

Not so much that exactly - we can split them into 2 categories broadly, and they're fairly easy to identify.

The ones that have access to Hospitality tickets (and sometimes other perks on the festival itself like shuttle buses direct to inside the site) tend to have some form of active relationship with the Festival, and usually offer something more than money in return - most typically they'll let the festival use some of their land, and they'll use the rest for their own glamping operations.

The ones that don't have that relationship are pretty much just other local landowners cashing in. The council have acknowledged in the debrief report that they can have only limited control over these because they're not part of the festival site and not large enough numbers to need licensing, other than if they apply for an alcohol licence.

At least two of the people who've been most active in trying to get the Festival shut down in the past have also fallen into the latter group - at least one has since died and I'm not sure about the other, but being able to profit off the festival never stopped them complaining to the council about it.

If it’s not against law and doesn’t require a license of sorts, then I’m not sure why you’d want to stop someone doing whatever they want in their own back gardens.

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Just now, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

If it’s not against law and doesn’t require a license of sorts, then I’m not sure why you’d want to stop someone doing whatever they want in their own back gardens.

Where the council have expressed concern is when it exacerbates Festival related problems.

An example from a few years ago was when Love Fields (the land owned by one of the people I was referring to and had a very toxic relationship with GFL at the time) started issuing their own arrival information which directly went against and caused huge problems with the traffic management put in place by the Festival.

I believe the relationship is better these days, and in recent years they've used Festival routing passes & guidance for arrivals and departures, but it only takes one rogue operator to fuck things up.

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2 hours ago, Old_Johno said:

Unfortunately there’s zero incentive to change the payment/ ticketing system. Makes headlines and trends on social media every year. 

Agreed. Most importantly because they sell out in 30 mins annually. Why on earth would they be paying for a new system to keep unsuccessful people slightly less annoyed when the one they have does exactly what it needs to do already ie sell out in 30 mins or less. The same number of people still dont get to go.

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2 minutes ago, incident said:

Where the council have expressed concern is when it exacerbates Festival related problems.

An example from a few years ago was when Love Fields (the land owned by one of the people I was referring to and had a very toxic relationship with GFL at the time) started issuing their own arrival information which directly went against and caused huge problems with the traffic management put in place by the Festival.

I believe the relationship is better these days, and in recent years they've used Festival routing passes & guidance for arrivals and departures, but it only takes one rogue operator to fuck things up.

Yeah, that does sound like a pain in the *rse.

I'm old enough to remember when Mendip refused the licence and tbh the festival have done an incredible job keeping them onside for the last 20 or 30 years.

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Also on the SEE bashing front when it comes to ticketing, the booking fee is £5 per ticket and has been since 2007 or earlier, it has never gone up for inflation

currently it is just a 1.8% booking fee (5 / 280)

Now bear in mind every other music event in existence is at least a 10% booking fee. That could be £20+ easily.

they are charging £9.30 for postage this year but if youre in a group just get as many as possible sent to one address to make a saving

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41 minutes ago, Memory Man said:

Also on the SEE bashing front when it comes to ticketing, the booking fee is £5 per ticket and has been since 2007 or earlier, it has never gone up for inflation

currently it is just a 1.8% booking fee (5 / 280)

Now bear in mind every other music event in existence is at least a 10% booking fee. That could be £20+ easily.

they are charging £9.30 for postage this year but if youre in a group just get as many as possible sent to one address to make a saving

Separating out postage is just a way to make it seem cheaper, in reality there's £15 worth of fees which makes it feel expensive. 

There's really no need for the postage of tickets, you can replicate the exact same security, if not better, digitally. 

Obviously give people the option to buy a "memento".

Edited by Leyrulion
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Again they could go digital but why invest when what they have now works? You’d have to show ID at the gate if they went digital surely? Also digitising begins to open the door to fakes / fraud etc

what they have isnt perfect but it really works

its also only £14.30 a ticket if you only get your own sent to you. Im splitting ours 4 ways. £7.33 a ticket total fees. 2.6%. You literally cannot beat that in live music. Even at £14.30 its still 5.1% which is still half the standard booking fee of anywhere else

Edited by Memory Man
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Saying "go digital to save postage costs" doesn't necessarily help - yes, you save however much on postage, but you add (potentially massive) increased costs elsewhere with a technology solution that needs to cover 19 odd gates many of them 24/7 and scale to cope with wednesday am queues.

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Phone batteries dying, no signal, lost phone etc etc would cause massive extra waiting times in the queues. Liverpool started using NFC phone passes this season and for the first half of the season it causes huge problems at the turnstiles.

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8 hours ago, stuie said:

I think they should use West Holts as the inspiration for a new Silver Hayes.  One big stage with excellent programming and the area will have its own vibe.  The days of the dedicated 'Dance Village' are over as it's now represented in many other places across the festival. 

Wouldn't this just be another, most likely less impressive Arcadia really - a big stage with excellent programming and its own vibe.

---

There is no doubt better systems out there but the Ticketmaster queue is not it. The current system gives people who are super prepared (i.e. us) the best chance so I don't get why anyone on here is asking for a randomly shuffled queue. Its also completely fair on everyone who starts refreshing on the hour, people who start later still have a chance which is fine but its the people who keep at it that will get the tickets most likely.

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29 minutes ago, gfa said:

Wouldn't this just be another, most likely less impressive Arcadia really - a big stage with excellent programming and its own vibe.

I was thinking a more traditional big stage. Arcadia crane and spider are both more 360 deg. arena spaces. 

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2 minutes ago, stuie said:

I was thinking a more traditional big stage. Arcadia crane and spider are both more 360 deg. arena spaces. 

Fair enough - could definitely do with some improvements although as others suggested if it can't stay open till late late its not worth bothering as much. Refining the lineup for SH with less stages could be great though

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Likely a very controversial one here - but some memories that have stuck out at a lot of festivals have been ending up on a fair ride at 2am (usually sticks out in my memory amongst hopping between dance tents etc). I'm not talking some 100ft tall ride that will just get complaints from the locals - more that they could do something impressive with it, maybe put it inside and fill the room with lasers, effects etc so its just completely disorientating.

It would obviously have to be done just right so its 100% impressive and 0% tacky but i would like to see them have a go at it

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9 hours ago, Supernintendo Chalmers said:

Yep. A blank screen or the dinosaur of doom is hugely demoralising. With the technology available these days, there's absolutely no reason why they can't provide:

  • A holding screen refreshing every so often, giving an indication of sales progress
  • A virtual queuing system, indicating your place in it, maybe even an estimated time to move into the next stage
  • Once you've secured your tickets, a reliable system that ensures you won't be kicked out of the screen
  • Sufficient time in which to carefully enter your registration and payment details. Up to ten minutes would be fair, given the amount of information you've got to enter, whilst your adrenaline is pumping
  • Maybe a section on the website where you can sign-in, say up to two hours before the sale, pre-load your registration (which would check that your information is also correct) and payment details ahead of the sale going live? Then, when the sale actually starts and you secure your tickets, all your details are entered and pre-authorised, making it a much quicker and less stressful exercise.

The sad thing is, come Thursday evening and Sunday lunchtime, we'll probably be talking about the same system and website failures that have plagued the ticket sale for the last 8/9 years.

 

If we give people 10 minutes to enter their details then tickets will still be coming back on sale many hours later. It will be a nightmare hellscape you can never escape from because of the small chink of hope.

I guess it rewards the obsessed though.

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3 hours ago, Memory Man said:

Again they could go digital but why invest when what they have now works? You’d have to show ID at the gate if they went digital surely? Also digitising begins to open the door to fakes / fraud etc

what they have isnt perfect but it really works

its also only £14.30 a ticket if you only get your own sent to you. Im splitting ours 4 ways. £7.33 a ticket total fees. 2.6%. You literally cannot beat that in live music. Even at £14.30 its still 5.1% which is still half the standard booking fee of anywhere else

Why would digitising be open to fraud and require ID when you don't need ID currently? You'd literally just move the online registration details into a ticket and add a moving water mark over the image. If anything it would be more secure. 

Tickets are already scanned on the gate aren't they? They come with a bar code? So you'd scan the bar code the same way and check the photos the same way currently.

I never suggested it wasn't industry standard, but the industry standard is shit.

3 hours ago, incident said:

Saying "go digital to save postage costs" doesn't necessarily help - yes, you save however much on postage, but you add (potentially massive) increased costs elsewhere with a technology solution that needs to cover 19 odd gates many of them 24/7 and scale to cope with wednesday am queues.

Yeah, it's predicated on the digital solution being cheaper but even if everyone is sending four tickets to the same address that's over £300 grand for postage costs. I'm sure there's someone out there who would want to undercut that. 

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