Digital tickets in the future

[Jose Pose]

2 minutes ago, gfa said:

 

Sure but when they do change it they could lower the price to like £5, not have to post anything and deal with issues and make even more as profit.

They have to weigh up the cost of investing in the new system though, at the moment the current system wont cost them anything as we pay for it. 

[DeanoL]

38 minutes ago, clarkete said:

Can you think of any precedent for what you describe anywhere in the world, at a rural location, for something which runs for less than a week. 

Yeah, Worthy Farm and Glastonbury festival. They already do it. Just not out to the gates. You think the Pyramid sounddesk isn't wired up to the Pyramid PA?

The stalls all get power from somewhere too.

[Leyrulion]

20 minutes ago, Jose Pose said:

They have to weigh up the cost of investing in the new system though, at the moment the current system wont cost them anything as we pay for it. 

See will charge them for the administration of the ticketing system, which includes organising special delivery of 135k special delivery tickets. That won't be cheap. 

[Leyrulion]

1 hour ago, DeanoL said:

The only thing unreliable is using some sort of wireless transmission. It can get interference from various sources, varying signal strengths so needing repeaters across the site, overloaded by other wireless networks being set up, or even phones, it's hard to do a real stress test as you can't easily simulate the conditions of 200,000 people on site... that's why you wouldn't use it for something over such a large area if you can help it.

But you can wire in. A single ethernet cable is about 10x the bandwidth of the fanciest wireless network. No live current so doesn't have to be buried as deep or shielded in the same way as power cables. You'd need a small (shoebox size) box at every end point/gate as a permanent structure to hold the socket, but then you're sorted.

It's not a *simple* task - you'd still be digging up trenches across a load of farmland to bury the stuff which would be disruptive - but it's not like it's something that's never been done before. Hell, I know a fair few people who have done it from their house to their sheds when they converted them into home offices.

There might also be better options - I don't know if the gates already have power but if so you can just run the lines overhead in the same way.

So the one festival I've scanned tickets for the people doing the scanning didn't need any WiFi at all at the customer facing end.

The scanner had all 15k tickets loaded on it, you got 50 wristbands. Scanned the ticket, have a wristband if it was green. When you ran out of wristbands you went to the base, they checked the number of scans matched the number of wristbands. I'm not sure how the scanner linked to the database but it was festival republic so they must be confident of it not being able to be scammed. 

Obviously it's be a bit more intensive for Glastonbury with the pressure to bunk in being higher but if they use it for something like download (which actually has similar volumes of ticketed customers 90k Vs 135k) then it could work here. 

Like I said yesterday it'll only happen when they're forced to because of crowd control issues and it becomes cheaper to do it this way.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Leyrulion

[gfa]

33 minutes ago, Jose Pose said:

They have to weigh up the cost of investing in the new system though, at the moment the current system wont cost them anything as we pay for it. 

 

12 minutes ago, Leyrulion said:

See will charge them for the administration of the ticketing system, which includes organising special delivery of 135k special delivery tickets. That won't be cheap. 

Give it a year or two longer post-covid when they have better finances and it will happen.

Its obviously an investment, they need the money to put up for it but it will pay itself off fairly quickly I think.

[Jose Pose]

27 minutes ago, Leyrulion said:

See will charge them for the administration of the ticketing system, which includes organising special delivery of 135k special delivery tickets. That won't be cheap. 

Don’t we pay an admin fee though, isn’t it a fiver? That’s £675k. Plus there is £25 from every non paid deposit or balance. I highly doubt whatever it costs see isn’t fully covered by the punter, (I mean why wouldn’t they pass it on to us) especially as I thought it was largely accepted they more or less do it for free anyway for the cachet of having the Glastonbury name? Plus there is no way the £9.75 for postage doesn’t include a healthy margin as well.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Jose Pose

[paulshane]

31 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Yeah, Worthy Farm and Glastonbury festival. They already do it. Just not out to the gates. You think the Pyramid sounddesk isn't wired up to the Pyramid PA?

The stalls all get power from somewhere too.

lol

 

and do these magic ethernet cables also handle the thousands of database queries a second as well? or would there need to be a metric sh*t ton of extra backend server infrastructure to run all this as well? (spoiler: yes)

It's perfectly feasable, but incredibly unlikly to be a benefit based on cost and time to build.

[DeanoL]

15 minutes ago, paulshane said:

lol

 

and do these magic ethernet cables also handle the thousands of database queries a second as well? or would there need to be a metric sh*t ton of extra backend server infrastructure to run all this as well? (spoiler: yes)

It's perfectly feasable, but incredibly unlikly to be a benefit based on cost and time to build.

Thousands a second? There's 20 gates? How fast have you got those stewards working!?

[DeanoL]

(It could also be done without the infrastructure. If all you're trying to achieve is a digital system with security equal to that of a paper ticket. An animated, on screen ticket with photo checked at the gate. Steward gives you a code which you enter on to the app that marks the ticket as stubbed, you show the stubbed ticket screen to the wristband person to get your band. That would probably be a bit slower than paper though.)

Edited June 15, 2023 by DeanoL

[paulshane]

7 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Thousands a second? There's 20 gates? How fast have you got those stewards working!?

Tell me you don't know anything about IT without telling me you don't know anything about IT.

[DeanoL]

6 minutes ago, paulshane said:

Tell me you don't know anything about IT without telling me you don't know anything about IT.

Tell me you're a c**t without telling me you're a c**t.

[Leyrulion]

37 minutes ago, Jose Pose said:

Don’t we pay an admin fee though, isn’t it a fiver? That’s £675k. Plus there is £25 from every non paid deposit or balance. I highly doubt whatever it costs see isn’t fully covered by the punter, (I mean why wouldn’t they pass it on to us) especially as I thought it was largely accepted they more or less do it for free anyway for the cachet of having the Glastonbury name? Plus there is no way the £9.75 for postage doesn’t include a healthy margin as well.

They'll charge twice, customers and the festival. That's fairly standard.

[Vulpes vulpes]

[shuttlep]

I think it will happen one day, but why change something if it works.

why pay millions for a system  that does the same thing that is happening now

[Jose Pose]

1 minute ago, Leyrulion said:

They'll charge twice, customers and the festival. That's fairly standard.

I highly doubt it, the fees will cover the cost of the whole thing, that’s why they’re charged. Do you honestly think Glastonbury would hand over x amount to see and then let them charge their customers an extra £5 as well? £5 per ticket will be more than enough to cover the cost of the whole endeavour, especially as see effectively do it at cost. 

[Leyrulion]

37 minutes ago, paulshane said:

lol

 

and do these magic ethernet cables also handle the thousands of database queries a second as well? or would there need to be a metric sh*t ton of extra backend server infrastructure to run all this as well? (spoiler: yes)

It's perfectly feasable, but incredibly unlikly to be a benefit based on cost and time to build.

I mean every other festival does it and copes. 

Leeds, reading, download are similar order of scale. 

Boomtown has similar connection problems (it's in a national park with poor signal)

Why would Glastonbury not be able to handle it?

 

[Leyrulion]

Just now, Jose Pose said:

I highly doubt it, the fees will cover the cost of the whole thing, that’s why they’re charged. Do you honestly think Glastonbury would hand over x amount to see and then let them charge their customers an extra £5 as well? £5 per ticket will be more than enough to cover the cost of the whole endeavour, especially as see effectively do it at cost. 

Yes I do because that's how the ticketing model tends to work. There will be a fee for the ongoing support and distribution to the festival. It's pretty standard.

[gfa]

52 minutes ago, Jose Pose said:

Don’t we pay an admin fee though, isn’t it a fiver? That’s £675k. Plus there is £25 from every non paid deposit or balance. I highly doubt whatever it costs see isn’t fully covered by the punter, (I mean why wouldn’t they pass it on to us) especially as I thought it was largely accepted they more or less do it for free anyway for the cachet of having the Glastonbury name? Plus there is no way the £9.75 for postage doesn’t include a healthy margin as well.

The point is by investing in a modern system they could make even more money off the admin fees by not needing to send out ten of thousands of letters in the long run

[Jose Pose]

9 minutes ago, Leyrulion said:

Yes I do because that's how the ticketing model tends to work. There will be a fee for the ongoing support and distribution to the festival. It's pretty standard.

But do you not think the Glastonbury situation is unique in that they just do it for the name, so it’s not likely to be the same as normal situation. Much like every other aspect of the festival, compared to something like Reading?

[paulshane]

57 minutes ago, Leyrulion said:

I mean every other festival does it and copes. 

Leeds, reading, download are similar order of scale. 

Boomtown has similar connection problems (it's in a national park with poor signal)

Why would Glastonbury not be able to handle it?

 

Glastonbury Festivals could easilly handle it - the question is 'do they have to?'

 

Would a new system save money vs what is in place right now ?

[paulshane]

1 hour ago, DeanoL said:

Tell me you're a c**t without telling me you're a c**t.

lol

[clarkete]

5 minutes ago, paulshane said:

Would a new system save money vs what is in place right now ?

Absolutely not. 

55 minutes ago, gfa said:

The point is by investing in a modern system they could make even more money off the admin fees by not needing to send out ten of thousands of letters in the long run

The cost of IT, connectivity, security and infrastructure would make those delivery costs seem merely incidental. 

[Pinhead]

I reckon they could do it at a pinch with ethernet - use a shielded cat6A and just run 100mbps down it to increase the length - sufficient for tix scan transactions at a gate of say 6-8 per sec. They could run the cable with the water pipes that already permenantly cross the site. May only even need to run them between the gates and the accreditation marquee at each gate then uplink to 4g from there?

[Superscally]

2 hours ago, gfa said:

 

Sure but when they do change it they could lower the price to like £5, not have to post anything and deal with issues and make even more as profit.

But the tech and maintenance of that would probably cost more, not less.

[Superscally]

3 hours ago, Cleetus said:

The Scottish NHS covid vaccine app was fool proof that way.

Had the live time counting away while changing colours. Basically so screenshots wouldn't work. 

Worked perfectly for getting into those gigs when venues started to open again.

Not sure what England or Wales had.

Anyway basically that with your photo, scannable barcode and that's it sorted. 

 

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Leyrulion said:

I don't know if that's true? 

Scanning an app isn't necessarily going to be longer than handing over the paper ticket, putting it under the UV scanner, seeing the security marks and checking the photo with the person in front of you. 

 

The tech required for that in a field is massive, expensive and could potentially fail. Of course, if it can be done then why not...