2024 Ticket Buying Tips

[stuie]

5 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

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.

Just as an example, Sunday morning news featured BBC and Sky stories 'Glastonbury has sold out in minutes' - I doubt they'd even bother mentioning they'd held their annual ticket raffle. 

Also, people would lose interest entering their details after several years of not winning. 

The hard to get tickets are very much part of the Glastonbury brand now and they'll do whatever they can to keep it that way. 

 

[stuie]

Just one more thing that's not been mentioned that occurred to me last night - for the festival to run smoothly, you need a core base of ticket holders that have been there before and know their way around. 

If you have a ticket ballot and the result of that is that > 80% of people have never been before suddenly get tickets, the place would be absolute carnage with no one having a clue where they are going. 

Yes, maps and signs help and there are new people each year but crowds of those sizes flow easier when people are familiar with their surroundings. 

 

[kerplunk]

8 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

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.

These other ballotted events - are they single ticket only entries or multiple?

[gooner1990]

Not so sure on the ballot....I managed to get some Euro2024 tickets last week....20m applications, I did one application.

Speaking with friends and browsing on social media people are kicking off because they didn't get tickets despite setting up 10 different accounts with UEFA, 10 applications for multiple games.

All a ballot would encourage is people to do the same for Glastonbury unless there was some measure to ensure only one reg per person was used.

Edited November 21, 2023 by gooner1990

[Skip997]

8 minutes ago, stuie said:

If you have a ticket ballot and the result of that is that > 80% of people have never been before suddenly get tickets, the place would be absolute carnage with no one having a clue where they are going. 

Could be a good thing

Could be a bad thing

Depends....

[majormajormajor]

14 hours ago, Supreme2 said:

Oh sorry I’m not really that good with networking. I just tried it with the IP and it gave me the queue page and 403 error saying not authorised or something along those lines 

Don't worry - I'm a network engineer and it isn't exactly straightforward for me either 😄

[kerplunk]

14 minutes ago, Skip997 said:

Could be a good thing

Could be a bad thing

Depends....

It makes my head spin trying to think through the knock-on consequences of a ballot system - and not just for the 'vibe'

I bet it would for the organisors too and for that reason they're unlikely to go for it - too difficult to predict the consequences.

Better the devil you know

Edited November 21, 2023 by kerplunk

[The Nal]

25 minutes ago, stuie said:

If you have a ticket ballot and the result of that is that > 80% of people have never been before suddenly get tickets, the place would be absolute carnage with no one having a clue where they are going. 

And you'd have the rest of the 20% forced fun brigade shouting "Don't turn around" at people walking up the hill. 

[DeanoL]

37 minutes ago, stuie said:

Just as an example, Sunday morning news featured BBC and Sky stories 'Glastonbury has sold out in minutes' - I doubt they'd even bother mentioning they'd held their annual ticket raffle. 

Also, people would lose interest entering their details after several years of not winning. 

The hard to get tickets are very much part of the Glastonbury brand now and they'll do whatever they can to keep it that way. 

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. 

32 minutes ago, stuie said:

Just one more thing that's not been mentioned that occurred to me last night - for the festival to run smoothly, you need a core base of ticket holders that have been there before and know their way around. 

If you have a ticket ballot and the result of that is that > 80% of people have never been before suddenly get tickets, the place would be absolute carnage with no one having a clue where they are going. 

Yes, maps and signs help and there are new people each year but crowds of those sizes flow easier when people are familiar with their surroundings. 

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. 

Edited November 21, 2023 by DeanoL

[Scrump]

56 minutes ago, incident said:

The server used in this exploit was not from an adjacent or guessed IP. There was a different pool entirely, that was in active use at the same time for www.seetickets.com and www.gigsandtours.com

How do you know this? Not as in "I don't believe you"... I mean how have you come to understand this from the information available to us .

Extra points for answering so that I actually understand 😁

[incident]

3 minutes ago, Scrump said:

How do you know this? Not as in "I don't believe you"... I mean how have you come to understand this from the information available to us .

Extra points for answering so that I actually understand 😁

I've (long term) been keeping an eye on the addresses used.

Not just on glastonbury.seetickets.com, but also www.seetickets.com and www.gigsandtours.com (and a couple other sites of theirs that have relevance).

They have a habit of switching things around ahead of a big sale, as happened last week.

edit: and the exploit was posted on Sunday in this thread, with the 167.* address in it.

Edited November 21, 2023 by incident

[NotAnInsider]

Devils advocate on the vibe thing...  Like it or not, it has changed over the years I've been going. I think a lot will agree that the vibe around certain areas of the site in the early 90s was not a good one and be thankful it changed. It's shifted again in recent years, especially after covid and not in a good way.

There are different types of organised groups hoovering up tickets; if you look around social media there is something to suggest that one of those groups are the type that are likely to be ketted up morons who wee on the land and get a bit fighty - some of that has had an especially high profile in the press this week. You could argue that those people are a negative for the festival overall and fewer of them being successful in the ticket sale would be better.

But no one has a god given right to go the festival and the thing is going to change over time. Its the natural order of things.

[DeanoL]

22 minutes ago, kerplunk said:

Better the devil you know

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)

Edited November 21, 2023 by DeanoL

[DeanoL]

2 minutes ago, NotAnInsider said:

Devils advocate on the vibe thing...  Like it or not, it has changed over the years I've been going. I think a lot will agree that the vibe around certain areas of the site in the early 90s was not a good one and be thankful it changed. It's shifted again in recent years, especially after covid and not in a good way.

There are different types of organised groups hoovering up tickets; if you look around social media there is something to suggest that one of those groups are the type that are likely to be ketted up morons who wee on the land and get a bit fighty - some of that has had an especially high profile in the press this week. You could argue that those people are a negative for the festival overall and fewer of them being successful in the ticket sale would be better.

But no one has a god given right to go the festival and the thing is going to change over time. Its the natural order of things.

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).

[Scrump]

4 minutes ago, incident said:

I've (long term) been keeping an eye on the addresses used.

Not just on glastonbury.seetickets.com, but also www.seetickets.com and www.gigsandtours.com (and a couple other sites of theirs that have relevance).

They have a habit of switching things around ahead of a big sale, as happened last week.

edit: and the exploit was posted on Sunday in this thread, with the 167.* address in it.

Out of reactions so you're stuck with this thank you!

I'm geekily interested in how you keep an eye on these things to the extent that you know what the architecture being used is. But I don't think I'll understand any answer and tbh I'd end up going down a rabbit hole for sure. 

[Chicken Bob]

16 hours ago, fraybentos1 said:

Did anyone get tickets while being clearly over the 60refreshes per min 'limit'?

I did 

[gooner1990]

28 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

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)

I posted this thread in October 2018 when I missed out on the initial sale for the 2019 festival.....as you say....all of this is nothing new!

 

 

[Nick_]

1 hour ago, stuie said:

Just one more thing that's not been mentioned that occurred to me last night - for the festival to run smoothly, you need a core base of ticket holders that have been there before and know their way around. 

 

It had been mentioned at least by me in 
 
https://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/topic/250099-2024-ticket-buying-tips/?do=findComment&comment=6686480

[Penrhos]

On the plus point - no matter how people got tickets, one thing the Festival has got right is having your picture and name printed on the ticket as it kills the resale market.

 

Imagine what price tickets would be going for on resale sites.....

[snoelb]

5 hours ago, johnnynodoe said:

Might be worth pointing out that if the recipient followed this to the letter, it wouldn't have worked, because the hash at the beginning turns the entire line into a comment...

[Nick_]

1 minute ago, Penrhos said:

On the plus point - no matter how people got tickets, one thing the Festival has got right is having your picture and name printed on the ticket as it kills the resale market.

 

Imagine what price tickets would be going for on resale sites.....

Less than the "hospitality" tickets, I guess?

[stuie]

45 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

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'm not sure why my comment baffled you - there's value to the festival in it being the hottest ticket in town.   Sold out in minutes isn't the same as running a ballot.  People getting the hottest ticket by being determined and organised and the success stories and euphoria that comes along after that is what keeps it hot. 

New blood hear about this instant sell-out sensation and want to go next year, same as Tomorrowland.  After all, as it sells out in minutes it must be the bollocks, right?

Like you, I don't have any skin in this as I don't buy a ticket for me anymore but I was helping friends and apart from some tech loophole (which will be fixed) it all seems about the same as every other year since I started going so I don't know why people think they festival will suddenly change their business model. 

 

 

 

[briddj]

16 hours ago, fraybentos1 said:

Did anyone get tickets while being clearly over the 60refreshes per min 'limit'?

Yep. Never believed in the effect of the limit so stuck to the usual plan of 2 seconds across 5 browsers, plus another 2 on 20 seconds with some manual quick refreshing. I got our tickets.

[assorted]

2 minutes ago, snoelb said:

Might be worth pointing out that if the recipient followed this to the letter, it wouldn't have worked, because the hash at the beginning turns the entire line into a comment...

It’s interesting to me that people are bothering to create and spread false versions of the “hack” or “tech loophole” with a fake, more legitimate IP address than the one actually used (I also saw this happen on Reddit). It suggests to me that there are people that are concerned about the IP address they used and are trying to misdirect now. 

[DeanoL]

4 minutes ago, stuie said:

I'm not sure why my comment baffled you - there's value to the festival in it being the hottest ticket in town.   Sold out in minutes isn't the same as running a ballot.  People getting the hottest ticket by being determined and organised and the success stories and euphoria that comes along after that is what keeps it hot. 

New blood hear about this instant sell-out sensation and want to go next year, same as Tomorrowland.  After all, as it sells out in minutes it must be the bollocks, right?

Like you, I don't have any skin in this as I don't buy a ticket for me anymore but I was helping friends and apart from some tech loophole (which will be fixed) it all seems about the same as every other year since I started going so I don't know why people think they festival will suddenly change their business model. 

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.