2024 Ticket Buying Tips

[kerplunk]

4 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 (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)

The current system is on the verge of being broken - exciting stuff. Maybe, but the big thing missing here is 'good data' on what exactly is happening on ticket day. Where did you get your all-seeing eye?

Has it really got significantly worse or is the main problem that it is simply increasingly over subscribed?

When was 'peak fairness' in the ticket buying system btw. What year was that? 🙂

 

 

 

[DeanoL]

2 minutes ago, assorted said:

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. 

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.

[DeanoL]

5 minutes ago, kerplunk said:

The current system is on the verge of being broken - exciting stuff. Maybe, but the big thing missing here is 'good data' on what exactly is happening on ticket day. Where did you get your all-seeing eye?

Has it really got significantly worse or is the main problem that it is simply increasingly over subscribed?

When was 'peak fairness' in the ticket buying system btw. What year was that? 🙂

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.

Edited November 21, 2023 by DeanoL

[stuie]

5 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

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.

If you think about the festival scene in this country, there's been some failures, cancellations for 2024 already etc.  If you can't see the marketing value of sold out in X minutes, I don't know how to explain it.  It set the G apart, it's the daddy at the top of the chain.   They aren't just going to throw that in the bin because anecdotally, Mary and Bob from Swindon haven't got a look in for a few years now.   They will do everything they can to ensure that demand stays that high - like, er... booking Elton John and creating the scenes of the summer. 

Like Emily says most years, they remember very clearly the times when it didn't sell out like it does now.

[gigpusher]

4 hours ago, gooner1990 said:

What if someone entered 5 times under different names and addresses but then got 5 tickets?! 

They'd just put 4 back into resale I assume but I'm already aware that there are people who have 2 registrations so they can try in both coach and general sale and if they get general tickets put their coach ones back in the pot so people would definitely do this.

[Nick_]

24 minutes ago, briddj said:

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.

Could you explain that a bit more, please?

[Nutella Versace]

Intentionally or not, Glastonbury has developed a way to maintain year round interest & excitement, of which the ticket day bun fight is only part. The whole rumour mill, drip feed of acts, ticket & resale days, accommodation sale days etc maintains the vibe pretty much all year round. I doubt they would want to change that. I think any change to the way tickets are allocated would negatively impact that whole vibe around the festival. 

[stuie]

2 minutes ago, Nutella Versace said:

Intentionally or not, Glastonbury has developed a way to maintain year round interest & excitement, of which the ticket day bun fight is only part. The whole rumour mill, drip feed of acts, ticket & resale days, accommodation sale days etc maintains the vibe pretty much all year round. I doubt they would want to change that. I think any change to the way tickets are allocated would negatively impact that whole vibe around the festival. 

^^ This. 

[BBC7BBCHEAVEN]

I don't see how "sold out in X mins" is an argument against a ballot when we've already talked about the London marathon.

That's one of the most sought after races in the world and it's a ballot, it doesn't dampen the excitement or levels of people trying for it in any way.

All I would like to see is something to limit large buying blocks from trying so the playing field is levelled, and a ballot would do that.

 

Although to be fair, just requiring a login for the sale with groups of six to be pre-registered together and only those regs can buy for the other reg would solve it. (Assuming you can only have one login session at once it would also reduce the load on the servers)

Edited November 21, 2023 by BBC7BBCHEAVEN

[DeanoL]

7 minutes ago, stuie said:

If you think about the festival scene in this country, there's been some failures, cancellations for 2024 already etc.  If you can't see the marketing value of sold out in X minutes, I don't know how to explain it.  It set the G apart, it's the daddy at the top of the chain.   They aren't just going to throw that in the bin because anecdotally, Mary and Bob from Swindon haven't got a look in for a few years now.   They will do everything they can to ensure that demand stays that high - like, er... booking Elton John and creating the scenes of the summer. 

Like Emily says most years, they remember very clearly the times when it didn't sell out like it does now.

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.

[briddj]

11 minutes ago, Nick_ said:

Could you explain that a bit more, please?

Just had autorefresh extensions doing the refresh for me. But the claim was too many refreshes get you booted out. I've often been the one to get tickets for our group so I wasn't going to change a plan that works for me!

[DeanoL]

5 minutes ago, BBC7BBCHEAVEN said:

Although to be fair, just requiring a login for the sale with groups of six to be pre-registered together and only those regs can buy for the other reg would solve it. (Assuming you can only have one login session at once it would also reduce the load on the servers)

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.

[DeanoL]

11 minutes ago, Nutella Versace said:

Intentionally or not, Glastonbury has developed a way to maintain year round interest & excitement, of which the ticket day bun fight is only part. The whole rumour mill, drip feed of acts, ticket & resale days, accommodation sale days etc maintains the vibe pretty much all year round. I doubt they would want to change that. I think any change to the way tickets are allocated would negatively impact that whole vibe around the festival. 

I don't think taking "ticket & resale days" out of that and replacing it with "ballot draw and returns draw" would massively impact the festivals year-round marketing plan. Yes, it's marginally less exciting, although that's also if you make zero effort. You can actually make a ballot draw far more exciting and an actual event in a way you can't really with ticket sales.

[Nobby's Old Boots]

15 minutes ago, BBC7BBCHEAVEN said:

I don't see how "sold out in X mins" is an argument against a ballot

It's an argument against changing things at all, not specifically against a ballot.

A lot of pretending people don't understand what others are saying and just continuing round and round and round. It's blatantly obvious why they don't want to overhaul something that works so well for them. It sells out straight away, they're not going to change it.

[Chicken Bob]

15 minutes ago, BBC7BBCHEAVEN said:

I don't see how "sold out in X mins" is an argument against a ballot when we've already talked about the London marathon.

That's one of the most sought after races in the world and it's a ballot, it doesn't dampen the excitement or levels of people trying for it in any way.

All I would like to see is something to limit large buying blocks from trying so the playing field is levelled, and a ballot would do that.

 

Although to be fair, just requiring a login for the sale with groups of six to be pre-registered together and only those regs can buy for the other reg would solve it. (Assuming you can only have one login session at once it would also reduce the load on the servers)

Not sure why people keep comparing glasto to the London marathon. People who run the marathon mainly run by themselves, or maybe pairs. It doesn’t require groups of friends to be kept together. A ballot is a stupid idea. 

[stuie]

5 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

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 not just the media boost - it's the hype.  If that dies off, there's a problem. 

Which is why I can't see them making the switch to the ballot.

It's good to hear other opinions though and you make some good points, but at the end of the day we have no control over this - and don't even buy tickets for ourselves anymore!

My final thought is this - Glastonbury is one of the only instant sell out events in the country that has multiple other routes in once the event has sold out.  If you're prepared to do a bit of work to contribute towards the event, you can still get in. That seems pretty fair to me.

 

[The Nal]

How would a ballot system work? Groups of 6?

[DeanoL]

1 minute ago, Nobby's Old Boots said:

It's an argument against changing things at all, not specifically against a ballot.

A lot of pretending people don't understand what others are saying and just continuing round and round and round. It's blatantly obvious why they don't want to overhaul something that works so well for them. It sells out straight away, they're not going to change it.

The festival was selling out straight away and they changed the whole system before just to eliminate touts, either because they didn't want people getting ripped off or because they didn't want the tickets going to those with the most money.

It's taken a while, but this is now creeping back in - every year there are more and more "pay us £100 and we get you a ticket" things, some of which are scams, some are legit and just leveraging bots or real people to try and book your ticket. I do find the idea that the festival which invented an entire new ticketing system to beat touts back in the day would look at this becoming more and more common and just shrug.

(I do however, take the point I may be overstating the growth of this stuff and it's never going to be as big a problem as touting used to be, so they might not bother for that reason. I just don't believe if it does continue to grow they would ignore it.)

[fred quimby]

So with Ballot are people thinking you have to put accommodation preference in aswell? Wouldn't be too hard I guess  bit if a mare if groups were split across what they want . Pain for Glastonbury, could commission another system. 

Otherwise you could get the situation where you do the ballot and find a big percentage want campervan tickets and they are limited. So another ballot etc.

Other events seem to be for just a ticket, to say the marathon.

Another thing I don't know is what kind of contract they have signed with see. 

 

 

[DeanoL]

15 minutes ago, Chicken Bob said:

Not sure why people keep comparing glasto to the London marathon. People who run the marathon mainly run by themselves, or maybe pairs. It doesn’t require groups of friends to be kept together. A ballot is a stupid idea. 

A ballot system would keep groups of friends together better, as you could remove the 6-person limit. Mathematically, you could enter the ballot as any size group you wanted, and your odds would be the exact same. One group, one entry. Doesn't matter if it's a group of 2 or a group of 26. So you could actually guarantee that friends didn't get left behind. The only reason you'd need a limit would be administratively, but you could easily make it much higher than the current 6.

Again, ballot might not be the best way of doing things, but it'd actually improve issues with not everyone in the group getting to go.

(Of course, it would also remove the advantage large groups currently have over smaller groups, which means overall the odds of a group of 24 getting to go would be reduced. But in terms of keeping groups together it helps.)

[fraybentos1]

1 hour ago, Chicken Bob said:

I did 

What was your strategy? How many tabs or browsers and how quick each refresh?

[fred quimby]

12 minutes ago, The Nal said:

How would a ballot system work? Groups of 

Not sure if you would get a limit, but you only buy one raffle ticket per group. If people wanted fairness

[DeanoL]

3 minutes ago, fred quimby said:

Otherwise you could get the situation where you do the ballot and find a big percentage want campervan tickets and they are limited. So another ballot etc.

 

Isn't that how it works already? Separate sale for those things? I'd probably just leave those as is to be honest.

[fraybentos1]

1 hour ago, briddj said:

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.

Yeah fair play. I wish I’d been less conservative. So each of yours was at 2 second refresh but you had loads of browsers? Or just incognito tabs in same browser? 

 

34 minutes ago, briddj said:

Just had autorefresh extensions doing the refresh for me. But the claim was too many refreshes get you booted out. I've often been the one to get tickets for our group so I wasn't going to change a plan that works for me!

It’s not meant to boot you out, it’s meant to give you a fake holding page 

[fred quimby]

4 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Isn't that how it works already? Separate sale for those things? I'd probably just leave those as is to be honest.

But then you go back to the same situation surely. Get loads of people trying for your campervan ticket. Plus 2 separate computer systems to pay for

Edited November 21, 2023 by fred quimby