Resale Odds

[leonaves]

Trying to get an idea of the odds of getting tickets in the resale. I've heard a few numbers for total tickets available in the general sale:

• "Over 100,000" general admission tickets. (source)
• "135,000" tickets (source)
• "22,000" coach tickets (source)

My interpretation of this as that there are probably 135,000 total tickets divided into 22,000 coach tickets and around 113,000 general admission tickets. I know the capacity is around 200,000 so I guess the rest are artists, vendors, guestlists, media etc. Does anyone know if they hold back guestlist tickets as they don't know how many they'll have to give out and then release more into the resale once they get a better idea?

Assuming it's only "returns" that are released back into the resale, so only out of the original 135,000 pool, the next step is to estimate how many people will return their tickets. From reading on this forums and anecdotally, I've definitely seen a higher number of people give up these tickets this year, maybe between 5-10%? I've got 2/22 people I know who have returned their ticket so around that area. Which means based on the above estimates there'll be around 6,500–13,000 tickets available.

So then the question is how many people are going to be trying? Well in 2019 Emily said there were 2.4 million people registered (source). Now obviously these registrations last a long time and plenty of people registered will not be trying for tickets, but it gives us a fair upper limit. Let's say between 1 million and 1.5 million people trying on the day? I'm interested if anyone thinks I'm way out here. Obviously people will have friends trying for them in the resale but I would say that a lot of those people will be people who already have tickets and want friends to come, so are in that pool of registered users anyway, and probably wouldn't change the order of magnitude much.

Edit: Based on some replies, I'm going to revise this estimate downwards, to 350,000 – 750,000 as a rough range.

So using those ranges, and assuming everyone has an equal chance of getting through, we can estimate that the odds are between 0.8% and 3.7% (6,500/750,000 and 13,000/350,000). So approximately between 1/100 and 1/25 chance. (Previously estimated 1/200 and 1/70)

---

Now, this obviously seems pretty staunch odds, but let's speculate what we can do to increase our odds. Now first of all, unless I'm mistaken you can buy up to 4 tickets in the resale? And so if you do not have a group of 4 people, your odds actually decrease, if you assume others will be taking four at a time. So that's a minimum to actually meet those odds. Let's say you also have another group of 4 people who already have tickets trying for you. This puts your odds up to between 1/50 and 1/12 (Previously estimated at 1/100 – 1/25).

Let's also assume that the average person attempting to buy a ticket is not as "on the ball" as the average reader of this forum, with spreadsheets organised, multiple devices, etc., and assume that you have slightly better odds if you're somewhat organised. So maybe we're talking about a 1/30 – 1/8 chance for people on this forum—definitely an improvement.

But the takeaway from this really is that it's a numbers game. If you can get lets say, 20 people trying for one group of four, your odds increase to around 1/6. Still a long shot but not impossible! But hopefully this gives everyone an idea of what you might be expecting come resale day.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any input on some of the estimates I've given. In particular if you think there might be a larger pot of "unused guestlist tickets" that will be released at resale. Even an extra 5,000 in the pot actually increase these odds quite nicely, and an extra 10,000—if you have a big group trying for you—could actually push your odds to over 50%.

Edited March 7, 2022 by leonaves
Typo

[Crazyfool01]

I think the odds are better than that … but great bit of work though … 

[a6l6e6x]

Could use this in a probability dissertation 

[leonaves]

5 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

I think the odds are better than that … but great bit of work though … 

Yeah to be honest when I started writing up this post I expected to come up with a much higher chance, based on anecdotal evidence from these forums especially, so I'm wondering if I might be under/overestimating something and if so where. The biggest thing I think is I have no idea if there are extra tickets in the resale that aren't just returns, and if so how many. But I also wonder if I'm:

1. Overestimating actual people trying on the day.
2. Underestimating the positive impact of just being "organised" and on the ball. Maybe this could increase your odds by a significant factor, if the average person just refreshes a couple of times and gives up?

Edited March 7, 2022 by leonaves

[blutarsky]

I think your estimate for the number of people trying in a resale is way too high. I reckon you might be in the right ballpark for the original sale in October but I’m confident a large number of people who try in October and fail then don’t give it a second thought until the following October if at all: 

[danmarks]

I think 1million applying is massively high to be honest. Theres people with 2 or more registrations, there are some that won't ever get used. On pure gut feeling i would say maybe 500,000

[leonaves]

8 minutes ago, blutarsky said:

I think your estimate for the number of people trying in a resale is way too high. I reckon you might be in the right ballpark for the original sale in October but I’m confident a large number of people who try in October and fail then don’t give it a second thought until the following October if at all: 

 

6 minutes ago, danmarks said:

I think 1million applying is massively high to be honest. Theres people with 2 or more registrations, there are some that won't ever get used. On pure gut feeling i would say maybe 500,000

I've updated the original post based on your replies thanks 🙂

[leonaves]

1 minute ago, Big durbs said:

there is also the "acts" that put back in , so say for instance they allow an artist with 20 crew as an average , they then book 15 crew then the remaining 5 go back in the pot 

This is essentially what I mean by "tickets that aren't returns". Is this something they have a better idea of by the time resale goes around then? Common knowledge or just speculation?

[gigpusher]

Each person who wants to go will probably have multiple people trying for them though so it is difficult to calculate. I anticipate a higher number of people than a normal year will have gone back in the pot but then there will be all children who would have not needed a ticket who were allowed to buy one who will have taken tickets from the pot as well. Not to mention people who have asked if tickets can be transferred to other family members as someone has passed away, people who have become disabled so now entitled to a PA ticket. So many variables. In my head I have been thinking that you probably have about a 1/100 chance of getting a ticket. Obviously the more organised you are the better. 

[leonaves]

3 minutes ago, gigpusher said:

Each person who wants to go will probably have multiple people trying for them though so it is difficult to calculate. I anticipate a higher number of people than a normal year will have gone back in the pot but then there will be all children who would have not needed a ticket who were allowed to buy one who will have taken tickets from the pot as well. Not to mention people who have asked if tickets can be transferred to other family members as someone has passed away, people who have become disabled so now entitled to a PA ticket. So many variables. In my head I have been thinking that you probably have about a 1/100 chance of getting a ticket. Obviously the more organised you are the better. 

I doubt the children/deceased/disabled stuff will factor into it too much, in terms of order of magnitude I can't see it moving the needle much in terms of odds.

The one I am interested in is the idea that everyone will have multiple people trying for them. I did address this in the original post, but obviously it's hard to know. My gut tells me that most people with "multiple people trying for them" will be people with friends already going to the festival, so the friends will be trying so they can come. But if that's the case, the most that's likely to add to the "people trying" number is around 100,00, i.e. people with existing tickets. I'm sure there will be people enlisting those who can't go, but I imagine most of the "extra triers" will be those who already have a ticket. Given the estimate for people trying I have at the moment is already in the mid-100 thousands, I can't see this changing the odds by more than, 20%? i.e. if the odds are around 1/10 without this factored in, maybe it changes to 1/12?

[leonaves]

5 minutes ago, Big durbs said:

they have a much better idea by resale , they do " keep " some back in october for this , on the down side , dont forget local tickets , not sure on the numbers but they still come off the top line.

and they have an extra 7.5k i think in the licence that they didnt use in 2019 , i would guess they will dip into that this time to maximize numbers / profit 

Well this is still good to hear, because at the numbers I've estimated even an extra 5,000 not from the october sale do change these calculations quite significantly.

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

I’ve always worked on the rough assumption the odds in the resale are the broadly the same as the main sale. The amount of tickets available is a fraction (let’s say 10%) but I reckon the amount of people trying compared to October is probably about 10% too.

In October you get tons of people trying, in many cases half heartedly that will happen in some cases to get tickets (I know loads of people who got through randomly on their phone in their car and things like that) in the resale I think it’s just the hardcore left that really, really want to go.

The other thing that needs to be factored in which I think you have to an extent is the fact you can buy four tickets. If everyone bought four tickets then really the amount of chances you have at getting a ticket is the number of tickets divided by four. Obviously not everyone will buy four, but even if everyone buys two every successful session is two tickets gone.

I don’t see the odds for this resale being much different to any other, I reckon there will be greater demand compared to normal, but more tickets in the pot. I think that will skew slightly in favour of it being slightly harder, because although there will be more tickets back in the pot, realistically when you break it down it won’t be huge numbers more. And extra 10% back compared to normal is 13,500 tickets, but there might be an extra 100k people trying compared to normal. In reality who knows though, it’s all guesswork.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Deaf Nobby Burton

[vintagelaureate]

2 hours ago, leonaves said:

Trying to get an idea of the odds of getting tickets in the resale. I've heard a few numbers for total tickets available in the general sale:

• "Over 100,000" general admission tickets. (source)
• "135,000" tickets (source)
• "22,000" coach tickets (source)

My interpretation of this as that there are probably 135,000 total tickets divided into 22,000 coach tickets and around 113,000 general admission tickets. I know the capacity is around 200,000 so I guess the rest are artists, vendors, guestlists, media etc. Does anyone know if they hold back guestlist tickets as they don't know how many they'll have to give out and then release more into the resale once they get a better idea?

Assuming it's only "returns" that are released back into the resale, so only out of the original 135,000 pool, the next step is to estimate how many people will return their tickets. From reading on this forums and anecdotally, I've definitely seen a higher number of people give up these tickets this year, maybe between 5-10%? I've got 2/22 people I know who have returned their ticket so around that area. Which means based on the above estimates there'll be around 6,500–13,000 tickets available.

So then the question is how many people are going to be trying? Well in 2019 Emily said there were 2.4 million people registered (source). Now obviously these registrations last a long time and plenty of people registered will not be trying for tickets, but it gives us a fair upper limit. Let's say between 1 million and 1.5 million people trying on the day? I'm interested if anyone thinks I'm way out here. Obviously people will have friends trying for them in the resale but I would say that a lot of those people will be people who already have tickets and want friends to come, so are in that pool of registered users anyway, and probably wouldn't change the order of magnitude much.

Edit: Based on some replies, I'm going to revise this estimate downwards, to 350,000 – 750,000 as a rough range.

So using those ranges, and assuming everyone has an equal chance of getting through, we can estimate that the odds are between 0.8% and 3.7% (6,500/750,000 and 13,000/350,000). So approximately between 1/100 and 1/25 chance. (Previously estimated 1/200 and 1/70)

---

Now, this obviously seems pretty staunch odds, but let's speculate what we can do to increase our odds. Now first of all, unless I'm mistaken you can buy up to 4 tickets in the resale? And so if you do not have a group of 4 people, your odds actually decrease, if you assume others will be taking four at a time. So that's a minimum to actually meet those odds. Let's say you also have another group of 4 people who already have tickets trying for you. This puts your odds up to between 1/50 and 1/12 (Previously estimated at 1/100 – 1/25).

Let's also assume that the average person attempting to buy a ticket is not as "on the ball" as the average reader of this forum, with spreadsheets organised, multiple devices, etc., and assume that you have slightly better odds if you're somewhat organised. So maybe we're talking about a 1/30 – 1/8 chance for people on this forum—definitely an improvement.

But the takeaway from this really is that it's a numbers game. If you can get lets say, 20 people trying for one group of four, your odds increase to around 1/6. Still a long shot but not impossible! But hopefully this gives everyone an idea of what you might be expecting come resale day.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any input on some of the estimates I've given. In particular if you think there might be a larger pot of "unused guestlist tickets" that will be released at resale. Even an extra 5,000 in the pot actually increase these odds quite nicely, and an extra 10,000—if you have a big group trying for you—could actually push your odds to over 50%.

Whilst nowhere to your extent, this was my estimate based on an early count of returns off here.

https://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/topic/238513-balance-payments/?do=findComment&comment=6286018

[Suprefan]

Isnt the cap 143k this year for ticket buyers? The rest is staff and support. Also add in Sunday locals but thats a diff number altogether. 
 

 

[gfa]

I was planning to set up a poll tomorrow to see how many tickets people's groups have returned. Mine personally has returned 4/10 tickets and I know a decent amount have also been returned on here. Its definitely more than 5-10% i'd say

[Avalon_Fields]

11 minutes ago, vintagelaureate said:

Whilst nowhere to your extent, this was my estimate based on an early count of returns off here.

https://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/topic/238513-balance-payments/?do=findComment&comment=6286018

I’d reckon your estimate is realistic.

[blutarsky]

31 minutes ago, Suprefan said:

Isnt the cap 143k this year for ticket buyers? The rest is staff and support. Also add in Sunday locals but thats a diff number altogether. 
 

 

Standard 135k + the extra 7k not used in 2019, so 142k, but pretty much, yeah. 

[Gnomicide]

 

[Crazyfool01]

10 minutes ago, Gnomicide said:

 

And this is based on a poll of people that follow glastonbury twitter accounts and possibly not totally casual people …

[vintagelaureate]

23 minutes ago, Gnomicide said:

 

Eh, I tell you what, my late night in my head Maths game is strong! 

(see above/other thread)

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

2 hours ago, gfa said:

I was planning to set up a poll tomorrow to see how many tickets people's groups have returned. Mine personally has returned 4/10 tickets and I know a decent amount have also been returned on here. Its definitely more than 5-10% i'd say

Whereas 4/4 of my group have paid, plus I know a 6/6 and a 3/3 who have all paid as well, so that where 10% probably comes in as there will still be plenty of fully paid up groups.

[yehbutnobut]

I’m thinking the clocks changing on resale day could also give a slight nudge towards those that are organised. Knowing my older kids, there’s guaranteed to be a minority that get that wrong.

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

4 minutes ago, yehbutnobut said:

I’m thinking the clocks changing on resale day could also give a slight nudge towards those that are organised. Knowing my older kids, there’s guaranteed to be a minority that get that wrong.

Possibly, but in this day and age most people have smart phones that just update automatically. Of course if they don’t set an alarm then yes it could have an impact. 

[gfa]

1 hour ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

Whereas 4/4 of my group have paid, plus I know a 6/6 and a 3/3 who have all paid as well, so that where 10% probably comes in as there will still be plenty of fully paid up groups.

For sure. Wonder if its mostly younger or older people canning it. 3/4 cancels want to go but can't due to post-uni uncertainty about jobs etc

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

8 hours ago, gfa said:

For sure. Wonder if its mostly younger or older people canning it. 3/4 cancels want to go but can't due to post-uni uncertainty about jobs etc

Yeah I guess all the people I know are 30/40 so money and jobs are not really an issue. The group of 3 did have a bit of a wobble as two of them have since had two kids so life has changed a lot, but decided yesterday to pay up after all.