There has to be a better way to allocate tickets

[Tom White]

6 minutes ago, Neil said:

i spend a fortune on it so that efestivals can cope on busy days like today.

👍

[BBC7BBCHEAVEN]

1 hour ago, dingbat2 said:

Exactly, that the way I think it should be! When the system struggles like it did today it only improves the chances of the people who go the extra mile to bag the golden ticket

 

[Tom White]

3 minutes ago, BBC7BBCHEAVEN said:

 

😆

[stuartbert two hats]

6 hours ago, dotdash79 said:

See could scale the infrastructure to sell all the tickets in 2 min, but then loads of people would be annoyed at that.

No system is perfect but this is the best of a bad bunch.

Nah, they need to scale the system so it doesn't fall over all the time. I've no issue with the sale taking a while, I just don't want it to be clearly broken. 

Put people in a queue, then once they're out of the queue, the pages should all work. If they don't, you're  letting people out of the queue too fast for the hardware you've provisioned.

[stuartbert two hats]

3 hours ago, DeanoL said:

Your chances are the same if everyone is trying. In your case your mate reduced the chance of all of you going (compared to being in a group with everyone trying).

Not saying your friend is less worthy or anything, but the fact is by not trying he did reduce your groups' chances.

Big groups are definitely better. Starting with group sizes smaller than 6, they will definitely have fewer chances. One person trying on their own is six times less likely than a group of six, I think that's fairly obvious.

But what about 6 people vs 12? That wouldn't give 12x the chance of a single person, because when the tickets go on sale, you have two groups of six and nobody is better off than if it was just six people. But if one of those groups is successful, then for the rest of the time remaining, you have 12* people trying for that group, so now you really do have 12x the chance of a single person, at least for the remainder of the sale.

For my group, at one point there were 36 people trying to get the last group and the result is we're all going to the farm.

So bigger groups definitely help. It's tricky to calculate how much, since it doesn't scale linearly after sizes of six, you'd have to plug in variables such as the average time to successfully get some tickets and account for the contention given that hitting the reg page doesn't guarantee a sale. But I hope it's clear that there is an advantage to bigger groups, the bigger the better, provided you can be organised enough.

* You might only have 11 people with a chance if a successful buyer is blocked from further transactions, but it's not clear if that happens, certainly didn't some years in the past. 

[I am Jon]

I’m surprised Seetickets systems don’t seem to have improved much over last 5 years, while Ticketmaster appears to be technically ahead of them now.

Ticketmaster’s queueing system works pretty well but must require an order of magnitude more processing power than the Seetickets “holding page”. Not sure if it could hold up to typical Glastonbury traffic?

It is fair to say not all systems can be scaled up to meet demand by just throwing more servers, cpu cores etc at the problem.  

Edited November 6, 2022 by I am Jon

[gooner1990]

37 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Nah, they need to scale the system so it doesn't fall over all the time. I've no issue with the sale taking a while, I just don't want it to be clearly broken. 

Put people in a queue, then once they're out of the queue, the pages should all work. If they don't, you're  letting people out of the queue too fast for the hardware you've provisioned.

I have no issue in missing out on tickets because I or someone in my group didn’t get through, but this morning one of our group did and it hung on the payment screen for 5 mins, timed out/crashed and chucked him back to the start so now we have to rely on resales.

Very frustrating. 

[DeanoL]

2 hours ago, dingbat2 said:

It's something I wonder about. If they allowed ticketmaster to sell 5,000 tickets purely to the highest bidder  a week after the seetickets general sale, how much they would go for? The tickets wouldn't have any privileged access, they will be just standard camping tickets like all the others sold at standard prices the week before. All proceeds go to charity. The numbers of these tickets being such a small percentage of the total meaning the overall demographic of the festival won't be much different, especially ads the tickets are the same as all the others. Sell 5,000 at £1,000 compared with standard price of £300 each would mean another £3.5 million to good causes....

It already happens, guest/VIP tickets tend to be available for £1,000-£2,000. You need to know where to look but honestly if you can afford that you probably already do.

[stuartbert two hats]

25 minutes ago, I am Jon said:

...

It is fair to say not all systems can be scaled up to meet demand by just throwing more servers, cpu cores etc at the problem.  

I definitely accept that. There is a limit to how much of an impact just sliding up resources in your cloud portal will have. This kind of problem also needs software effort thrown at it. And of course, a better user experience won't increase the number of tickets sold, or the margin on the tickets - quite the opposite for the latter. So they won't do it, at least not much.

But today was pretty shambolic nevertheless.

 

[guypjfreak]

We used to be go with 25plus easy 

Now 6/8....... Unlike some people I love having a big group even though we all do what we want to do it's the mad meeting ups yakkking about what's gone on.. It makes my festival.. But now it's just.. Another festival.. 20 odd years in and you see people on here wanting the same fucking bands,,( except cold play lol..) I hope pulp.. Or radiohead don't play.. Or the artic monkeys.. But anyway I think there has to be a way that bigger groups can go 

The first thing I would do is put the deposit up to 75..or leave at 50 but you don't get it back without good reason.. Thus you get rid of the bucket listers as I call them  and the oo I've done glasto fuckers who don't even have the balls to sleep on site but in fancy camp sites... 

THESE....the fancy campers should be the last to be able to buy tickets.. Fill the farm first then sell on the rest.. 

Well there you go

If you have problems with this post don't bother to write it down.. I'm watching a TV series much more interesting that this... 

[Avalon_Fields]

It certainly was shambolic, and I can’t see there’d be any legitimate excuse, See tickets have been doing Glastonbury and the huge ticket day demand for years, so why such a mess? I guess we’ll not be told.

[BBC7BBCHEAVEN]

31 minutes ago, gooner1990 said:

I have no issue in missing out on tickets because I or someone in my group didn’t get through, but this morning one of our group did and it hung on the payment screen for 5 mins, timed out/crashed and chucked him back to the start so now we have to rely on resales.

Very frustrating. 

This is why people are so annoyed. And it pissed me off when people who got tickets act like it's all absolutely fine and people are just upset (I have tickets so no sourness here before the usual crap)

In our group, after the initial six tickets, between us we got through five times(!) but couldn't successfully check out the last six in the group's tickets. Hanging between the reg and payment page was the biggest issue (kicking back into the queue) but also had one instance of kicked out at payment. That's just a really poorly functioning service 

 

[guypjfreak]

10 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

It already happens, guest/VIP tickets tend to be available for £1,000-£2,000. You need to know where to look but honestly if you can afford that you probably already do.

They should be last on the tix list imo

[BBC7BBCHEAVEN]

1 minute ago, guypjfreak said:

 

The first thing I would do is put the deposit up to 75..or leave at 50 but you don't get it back without good reason.. 

THESE....the fancy campers should be the last to be able to buy tickets.. Fill the farm first then sell on the rest.. 

 

Has a problem with fancy campers..... solution is to increase the price which would only be a deterrent to the least well off.

I hope it's an educational show you're watching 

 

[Suprefan]

1 hour ago, I am Jon said:

I’m surprised Seetickets systems don’t seem to have improved much over last 5 years, while Ticketmaster appears to be technically ahead of them now.

Ticketmaster’s queueing system works pretty well but must require an order of magnitude more processing power than the Seetickets “holding page”. Not sure if it could hold up to typical Glastonbury traffic?

It is fair to say not all systems can be scaled up to meet demand by just throwing more servers, cpu cores etc at the problem.  

Ticketmaster is a true global operation. Also, they created a way for onsales wouldnt crash with the traffic like 25 years ago, its just evolved. See isnt doing large onsales on other continents on the regular now are they. Tm know how to shore up server power to deal with onsales. Why do you think Taylor has her presales on tuesday? Nobody else is going to have sales that day and theyll have full capacity to deal with the demand. Also, time zones.  

[Suprefan]

26 minutes ago, Avalon_Fields said:

It certainly was shambolic, and I can’t see there’d be any legitimate excuse, See tickets have been doing Glastonbury and the huge ticket day demand for years, so why such a mess? I guess we’ll not be told.

If they legit could force everyone to use one device then the traffic could be managed. But they wont invest in that sort of thing.

[incident]

4 hours ago, BBC7BBCHEAVEN said:

That's fundamentally wrong.

If you're in a big group obviously your chances are much higher. 

The only way group size wouldn't make a difference was if you could only buy your own ticket

In pure mathematical terms, sure, but reality is way more complex than that. Large groups can equally be a detriment if not managed very carefully.

Truth is I suspect that a group of 6 close friends will find it easier to organise it so everyone is fully invested, and drag in their parents, siblings, etc to help out. My suspicion (based on first hand experience) is that it doesn't automatically scale quite that well - when a group goes past say 20 it becomes difficult to keep that level of engagement up and you're likely to be carrying increasing numbers of passengers - who it's difficult to cut loose because the ever more complicated interpersonal relationships within the group. Large groups can be an advantage, but it requires a high level of discipline to maintain that otherwise it quickly turns into a disadvantage.

[drunk pumpkin]

I’d argue that two per booking would a fair system. Takes much longer but gives many more people opportunities. It also stops the multi group ethos. 

[gfa]

1 hour ago, I am Jon said:

I’m surprised Seetickets systems don’t seem to have improved much over last 5 years, while Ticketmaster appears to be technically ahead of them now.

Ticketmaster’s queueing system works pretty well but must require an order of magnitude more processing power than the Seetickets “holding page”. Not sure if it could hold up to typical Glastonbury traffic?

It is fair to say not all systems can be scaled up to meet demand by just throwing more servers, cpu cores etc at the problem.  

TM definitely can handle it, think how many seats a big stadium tour has - that must be approaching a million which is around how many try for glasto + not everyone gets a ticket

4 minutes ago, drunk pumpkin said:

I’d argue that two per booking would a fair system. Takes much longer but gives many more people opportunities. It also stops the multi group ethos. 

Festivals are a group holiday for a lot of people. If there was only me and a mate because we got unlucky we'd be annoyed. Its not going to change to 2 per booking, no way

[guypjfreak]

32 minutes ago, BBC7BBCHEAVEN said:

Has a problem with fancy campers..... solution is to increase the price which would only be a deterrent to the least well off.

I hope it's an educational show you're watching 

 

Nope detective old son.... 

Easy to make same priced camping inside the festive.. All you have to do is most the expense glamping inside to outside the festival...... Look there's no great solution.. This thread comes up every year... Your not going to stop the festival turning into a middle class festival now.. It's already one. Now they gotta keep us normal people going or they'll burn the festival out.. And at 335.. Fuckkkkkkk

I remember being on here years ago and most said 175..185 would be the limit 

2002....... 97

2010...... 185

2o15....220

2022....265

2023......335

And now like sports etc all the other festivals prices will follow suit.. Not this year but next... 

Fucking truth.. Strange series this BTW 

[drunk pumpkin]

10 minutes ago, gfa said:

TM definitely can handle it, think how many seats a big stadium tour has - that must be approaching a million which is around how many try for glasto + not everyone gets a ticket

Festivals are a group holiday for a lot of people. If there was only me and a mate because we got unlucky we'd be annoyed. Its not going to change to 2 per booking, no way

The group festival experience I get. Lots of my mates didn’t get tickets. But to make the system of buying tickets for the masses how do we make this insane festival fair for the 10’s of thousands applying an achievable festival 

[Penrhos]

This year was a shambles. I've done the ticket sales since 2009 and this felt the worst.

 

The main site has always been wobbly, but with the number of people hammering it's hardly surprising. If see actually came out and stated how many sessions/sec they were handling people might cut them some slack.

But once you get to the booking page and 100% once you get to the payment page no site should drop the session and lockout the reg numbers 

 

I work for a major retailer and we've invested in surge protection, offloading & citrix netscalers to protect the site from ddos & sale surge and it works fine, keeps the back end from being overwhelmed. And gives a holding page once the backend gets to 80% load. 

 

Also why are they issuing cookies that effectively kill your chance of getting past the holding page (proved this post sale today as one pc was still showing holding page at 11 even if I quit & relaunched chrome. Only deleting all cookies made the site work correctly).

[Mark Greensmith]

It’s already a ballot essentially, but it generally rewards people who try harder.

 

However, seetickets this year was a sham. It’s just not fair when you time out during payment. Those people should automatically get back in on a server failure. 

 

I really don’t believe that they couldn’t improve their infrastructure.

 

Just needs some decent IT

Edited November 6, 2022 by Mark Greensmith

[drunk pumpkin]

Just now, Mark Greensmith said:

It’s already a ballot essentially, but it generally rewards people who try harder.

 

However, seetickets this year was a sham. It’s just not fair when you time out during payment. Those people should automatically get back in on a server failure. 

 

I really don’t believe that they couldn’t improve their infrastructure.

Do you think it might be conscious choice to not improve the system. All of us want the feeling that we have the ability to get a ticket. If it was perfect it would sell out in 10 minutes would we be happy. I personally need the feeling that I’ve still a chance. 50 minutes in seeing that technology was failing kept me invested. 

[jow95]

5 minutes ago, drunk pumpkin said:

Do you think it might be conscious choice to not improve the system. All of us want the feeling that we have the ability to get a ticket. If it was perfect it would sell out in 10 minutes would we be happy. I personally need the feeling that I’ve still a chance. 50 minutes in seeing that technology was failing kept me invested. 

Nah just put me out of my misery in the fastest way possible if it’s not on the cards