Reduction of attendees vs cost of ticket

[Skip997]

22 minutes ago, BluesManP said:As I expect boomers to be mostly sitting quietly somewhere, not going to the most contemporary acts, so it would mean less morning toilet trip clashes (as they wake up much earlier) and similar

Don’t be so sure. I was never in bed before 3am and usually 6am and there are  plenty of my age doing the same 

[BluesManP]

2 minutes ago, Skip997 said:

Don’t be so sure. I was never in bed before 3am and usually 6am and there are  plenty of my age doing the same 

 

Possibly, but just like you can find millenials in bed by 10pm and up by 6am, the vast majority won't be doing that. The late night spots were all filled with millennials and similar and all the comfort/chill driven areas are filled with boomers. Early in the morning, you mostly find boomers and similar already wandering about

[incident]

54 minutes ago, MEGATRONICMEATWAGON said:

Weirdly, I was just checking the 2010 addition of Glasto and according to the official Glastonbury page, it says that 135k tickets were sold, but only 37.5k passes were issued for crew and performers...

 

Why the heck has the ticket number gone up by three thousand, but the crew and performers amount nearly doubled?! 37.5k in 2010 to 69k in 2024.

 

 

2 things. Firstly there was a change in the way crew bands were counted about 10 years back - previously it was common practice for certain stages to reuse a "pass" across the weekend - so they'd have to ensure artists arrived at a certain time, and then left site after their set, so that someone playing later could take their place. The increase was supposed to eliminate that practice, with a more accurate number of passes allocated to each stage and artists able to arrive / leave much more on their own schedule.

 

Secondly and probably a more substantial impact is the increase in hospitality tickets, which count against that crew allocation (despite people incorrectly assuming it has led to fewer public tickets).

[balti-pie]

I was working on a hospitality and performers gate this year, and couldnt believe the amount of people leaving on the friday and saturday saying they were off home and wouldnt need a passout, as they werent coming back. Even had four people leaving on the thursday, saying they'd had a walk around and were off now! Seems like a dreadful waste of a hospitality ticket (£750+VAT) but its up to them i guess. 

i'd estimate at about a hundred people leaving on the friday, and another hundred leaving on the saturday. baffling to me, but if you truly do have more money than sense, then you can do that sort of thing i suppose. they seemed to mostly be through sponsors, local companies etc were printed on their tickets. 

 

Reminds me of those dreadful blogger types from 2016 (2016? i think it was) who turned up on the friday, stayed in a podpad, watched the football (a Switzerland game i believe) in a charging tent, then saw Adele and went home straight after her - i regularly rewatch it to anger myself 😁 

[gooner1990]

22 hours ago, gizmoman said:

Yep. this is us, we had decided by Friday we were not going to go next year, it's getting too much of a chore to walk miles every day and deal with the large crowds for what are, for us, diminishing returns, what we saw we enjoyed but we can go to smaller, cheaper festivals and have just as good a time without struggling with large crowds and poor visability. Not saying never again, but missed out on tickets last year for the first time and it wasn't the disaster I'd feared, we just went to other festivals instead. Quite happy to leave Glastonbury to the younger ones now.

 

What was your run like? Had you been going a long tiime?

 

I've only been going post-super fence and given I do other festivals I find there are a lot of 'Glastonbury specific' niggles that I encounter.

[DeanoL]

21 hours ago, Spindles said:

There was a post on reddit from someone who bought 3 drinks at a bar and was charged nearly £300, didn't notice til after the festival.  That's my big fear with cashless, that through malice or error you get overcharged and don't notice.  I took cash with me this year as ever, ended up spending about £60 in cash and double that on card.

Isn't the contactless limit £100 these days? So in that case he would have tried to tap, got told he needed to put the card in, been handed the terminal with the amount showing, have then typed in the PIN on that terminal, all without clocking it was the wrong amount?

 

Not that it's not possible, and mistakes of charging £60 instead of £6 or such are definitely an issue as it's below the threshold, but stuff over £100 shouldn't be happening unless people are paying zero attention at all.

 

(Also I appreciate phone signal at the festival isn't great, but if you have your banks app installed you can get notifications every time you make a transaction on the card, so in many cases people can check instantly, or at least once they get back to their tents.)

[philipsteak]

9 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Isn't the contactless limit £100 these days? So in that case he would have tried to tap, got told he needed to put the card in, been handed the terminal with the amount showing, have then typed in the PIN on that terminal, all without clocking it was the wrong amount?

 

Not that it's not possible, and mistakes of charging £60 instead of £6 or such are definitely an issue as it's below the threshold, but stuff over £100 shouldn't be happening unless people are paying zero attention at all.

 

(Also I appreciate phone signal at the festival isn't great, but if you have your banks app installed you can get notifications every time you make a transaction on the card, so in many cases people can check instantly, or at least once they get back to their tents.)

 

See my post on the previous page where I once managed to charge someone £120 instead of £1.20. Same thing must've happened and we both managed not to notice. Easy enough when you're busy/distracted/inebriated.

[tarw]

14 hours ago, BluesManP said:

 I don't know if 10k less people onsite would make that big of a difference. Especially if that number was randomly distributed across all the demographics attending Glasto. So if you tell me that 5k less millennials would attend, to me, it would make a bigger difference than if you told me that 10k less boomers would attend. As I expect boomers to be mostly sitting quietly somewhere, not going to the most contemporary acts, so it would mean less morning toilet trip clashes (as they wake up much earlier) and similar

Woah. That sounds very ageist and stereotyping to me. I’m 62 and I definitely don’t sit quietly somewhere!

Youre more likely to find me in the temple than acoustic 

[MEGATRONICMEATWAGON]

15 hours ago, BluesManP said:

 I don't know if 10k less people onsite would make that big of a difference. Especially if that number was randomly distributed across all the demographics attending Glasto. So if you tell me that 5k less millennials would attend, to me, it would make a bigger difference than if you told me that 10k less boomers would attend. As I expect boomers to be mostly sitting quietly somewhere, not going to the most contemporary acts, so it would mean less morning toilet trip clashes (as they wake up much earlier) and similar

 

I dunno. Most of the picnic blanket crew I see at the Pyramid are in the 25-45 age group, and in very large numbers, getting in the way, complaining when someone steps on a corner of the blanket, despite a massive 30k crowd is developing around them.

 

As for waking up earlier and toilet trip clashes; I don't think that's one of the foremost problems at Glastonbury. I certainly saw plenty of yoof and kids walking around campsites when I started my days around 8am.

Edited July 8 by MEGATRONICMEATWAGON

[Nice hymer]

5 minutes ago, tarw said:

Woah. That sounds very ageist and stereotyping to me. I’m 62 and I definitely don’t sit quietly somewhere!

Youre more likely to find me in the temple than acoustic 

Same. In our group, the kids (aged 20ish) prefer to hang out with us because we party smarter and are more enthusiastic than their peers. Early starts, late finishes and always aim to maximise our time at the farm.

Apparently we're much more fun, we bring the 90s energy that millennials appear to be missing...

[incident]

1 hour ago, DeanoL said:

Isn't the contactless limit £100 these days? So in that case he would have tried to tap, got told he needed to put the card in, been handed the terminal with the amount showing, have then typed in the PIN on that terminal, all without clocking it was the wrong amount?

 

Not that it's not possible, and mistakes of charging £60 instead of £6 or such are definitely an issue as it's below the threshold, but stuff over £100 shouldn't be happening unless people are paying zero attention at all.

 

For a traditional debit/credit card, yes.

 

For contactless payments via Google/Apple/Samsung/whatever Pay, then there's no limit.

[aj6658]

So just to mention that in 2020 accounts (which covers the 2019 festival) they made 46m when ticket prices were £248. They are exempt from releasing full accounts for the last few years so no idea what their revenue is but finger in the air, it must be around 75m if the tickets prices have gone up £100 x 200k people thats already another 20m + they must have increased rates for businesses.

 

I think at the end of the day the costs have gone up massively. You look at other festivals and see that if they aren't sold out they aren't going ahead. Secret garden party was like, we're not doing traditional headliners. 

 

Costs have gone up from cost to rent stuff, to get the people in, basically utilities and I tell you, Bands are now charging £100 for tickets when ion 2019 you could see good bands for <£60. Why would they come Glasto when they can make a killing from their own tour. Gotta be incentivised to come to a even greater extent 

 

We will never see a reduction in attendance unless 

1. Cost somehow go down massively. No idea how you do that. You either cut back in infrastructure (less toilets, less staff, less areas e.c.t) which kills the spirit of the festival  

2. They raise greater revenues. Either more tickets, higher prices, more merch. 

 

 

 

 

[DeanoL]

2 hours ago, philipsteak said:

 

See my post on the previous page where I once managed to charge someone £120 instead of £1.20. Same thing must've happened and we both managed not to notice. Easy enough when you're busy/distracted/inebriated.

I think there's a mindset issue that people need to get used to contactless payment being "check the amount, then tap". You're right people just trust it, but in the same way you should check your change if paying cash, people need to be more aware. 

(And most places should have it set up so they tap what you've bought, and the card reader calculates the amount due. Even the little Square reader I use for gigs does that. I put in "3 tickets" to the machine, not "£12" - which makes mis-keying much less likely).

1 hour ago, incident said:

 

For a traditional debit/credit card, yes.

 

For contactless payments via Google/Apple/Samsung/whatever Pay, then there's no limit.

But on those as soon as you pay you get a notification on the phone you paid with telling you what was charged, so you should be able to query it pretty much right away. But again, people need to get into the mindset of actually checking and not just assuming. But you're far more likely to get it sorted having paid by card than if you got given a five instead of a twenty for change.

[Dark Star]

59 minutes ago, aj6658 said:

So just to mention that in 2020 accounts (which covers the 2019 festival) they made 46m when ticket prices were £248. They are exempt from releasing full accounts for the last few years so no idea what their revenue is but finger in the air, it must be around 75m if the tickets prices have gone up £100 x 200k people thats already another 20m + they must have increased rates for businesses.

 

I think at the end of the day the costs have gone up massively. You look at other festivals and see that if they aren't sold out they aren't going ahead. Secret garden party was like, we're not doing traditional headliners. 

 

Costs have gone up from cost to rent stuff, to get the people in, basically utilities and I tell you, Bands are now charging £100 for tickets when ion 2019 you could see good bands for <£60. Why would they come Glasto when they can make a killing from their own tour. Gotta be incentivised to come to a even greater extent 

 

We will never see a reduction in attendance unless 

1. Cost somehow go down massively. No idea how you do that. You either cut back in infrastructure (less toilets, less staff, less areas e.c.t) which kills the spirit of the festival  

2. They raise greater revenues. Either more tickets, higher prices, more merch. 

 

Could Glastonbury continue to sell out if they didn't have mega headliners on all 3 nights? A shift to arena level headliners on 2 of the 3 nights at the Pyramid, and one mega act each year (carefully picked against other acts to try and split the crowd accordingly). I know they don't pay as much as other festivals, but the amount spent must be increasing fairly significantly? That might help the costs go a bit further.

Edited July 8 by Dark Star

[gooner1990]

2 hours ago, Dark Star said:

 

Could Glastonbury continue to sell out if they didn't have mega headliners on all 3 nights? A shift to arena level headliners on 2 of the 3 nights at the Pyramid, and one mega act each year (carefully picked against other acts to try and split the crowd accordingly). I know they don't pay as much as other festivals, but the amount spent must be increasing fairly significantly? That might help the costs go a bit further.

 

For me, they've sort of backed themselves into a corner with this massive headliner thing where now because of the scale of the event people now expect big name acts year after year.

 

In the early years ME said he didn't really go for big name worldwide acts but as we've seen over the last 20 or so years the names have got bigger and bigger and now when there's a year when there isn't one available or the negotiations don't go well people spit the dummy and get upset.

 

I'm not sure how, or if they would ever consider scaling back the festival slightly if the situation doesn't change over the next couple of years. 

 

[Tartan_Glasto]

I hadn't actually realised the ticket had gone up quiet as much as £100 since I last went in 2019. Quite a jump in a short space of time but still incredible value for what you get. 

 

I've said in the past that £400 would be my top end due to all the other costs involved in going but that may come quicker than I expected!

 

I didn't try for 2024 because we were going to be on honeymoon so never noticed the price of them. 

[Fishinginthelongdrops]

6 hours ago, Nice hymer said:

Same. In our group, the kids (aged 20ish) prefer to hang out with us because we party smarter and are more enthusiastic than their peers. Early starts, late finishes and always aim to maximise our time at the farm.

Apparently we're much more fun, we bring the 90s energy that millennials appear to be missing...

Same! It’s like the tortoise and the hair. Only the tortoise is on roller skates and the hare is on ket.

[gizmoman]

8 hours ago, gooner1990 said:

 

What was your run like? Had you been going a long tiime?

 

I've only been going post-super fence and given I do other festivals I find there are a lot of 'Glastonbury specific' niggles that I encounter.

First went in 97, very muddy but it didn't put us off, missed the next few years due to family/work commitments but returned in 2002, first superfence year and been to everyone since except last year when I finally ran out of luck on ticket day and resale.

 

We do other festivals, this year Bearded, Beautiful Days and Northern Kin, all geared to an older demographic and so much easier to get around, might go to Equinox too, not been before and it looks interesting.

[Leyrulion]

7 hours ago, Dark Star said:

 

Could Glastonbury continue to sell out if they didn't have mega headliners on all 3 nights? A shift to arena level headliners on 2 of the 3 nights at the Pyramid, and one mega act each year (carefully picked against other acts to try and split the crowd accordingly). I know they don't pay as much as other festivals, but the amount spent must be increasing fairly significantly? That might help the costs go a bit further.

Some would say they did that this year. 

[Leyrulion]

8 hours ago, aj6658 said:

So just to mention that in 2020 accounts (which covers the 2019 festival) they made 46m when ticket prices were £248. They are exempt from releasing full accounts for the last few years so no idea what their revenue is but finger in the air, it must be around 75m if the tickets prices have gone up £100 x 200k people thats already another 20m + they must have increased rates for businesses.

 

I think at the end of the day the costs have gone up massively. You look at other festivals and see that if they aren't sold out they aren't going ahead. Secret garden party was like, we're not doing traditional headliners. 

 

Costs have gone up from cost to rent stuff, to get the people in, basically utilities and I tell you, Bands are now charging £100 for tickets when ion 2019 you could see good bands for <£60. Why would they come Glasto when they can make a killing from their own tour. Gotta be incentivised to come to a even greater extent 

 

We will never see a reduction in attendance unless 

1. Cost somehow go down massively. No idea how you do that. You either cut back in infrastructure (less toilets, less staff, less areas e.c.t) which kills the spirit of the festival  

2. They raise greater revenues. Either more tickets, higher prices, more merch. 

 

 

 

 

Worth pointing out that the actual number of tickets sold really hasn't changed substantially at all since 2014. 

I'm not sure where this "60k extra tickets" I've seen on social media has come from. 

 

They sold 138k general admission this year, 135k in 2014. 

That's 49 million and it cost £62 million to put on in 2023. So they're reliant on hospitality, glamping, traders, bars, merch and Sunday ticket to generate at least another £13 million before they get paid and donate to charity. 

 

Reducing capacity would also reduce income from all those other sources so ticket price would need to be even higher to cover it. 

 

[gooner1990]

11 hours ago, Leyrulion said:

Worth pointing out that the actual number of tickets sold really hasn't changed substantially at all since 2014. 

I'm not sure where this "60k extra tickets" I've seen on social media has come from. 

 

They sold 138k general admission this year, 135k in 2014. 

That's 49 million and it cost £62 million to put on in 2023. So they're reliant on hospitality, glamping, traders, bars, merch and Sunday ticket to generate at least another £13 million before they get paid and donate to charity. 

 

Reducing capacity would also reduce income from all those other sources so ticket price would need to be even higher to cover it. 

 

 

From what I understand they now sell 142,000 regular punter tickets and then performers, volunteers, paid workers etc its another 68,000 (capacity 210,000)

[gooner1990]

13 hours ago, gizmoman said:

First went in 97, very muddy but it didn't put us off, missed the next few years due to family/work commitments but returned in 2002, first superfence year and been to everyone since except last year when I finally ran out of luck on ticket day and resale.

 

We do other festivals, this year Bearded, Beautiful Days and Northern Kin, all geared to an older demographic and so much easier to get around, might go to Equinox too, not been before and it looks interesting.

 

Interesting.

 

I've been doing festivals since 1999 and Glastonbury 2004 and not missed one in that time either.

 

I did enjoy this year, but as I get older I'm finding myself less tolerable of the big crowds (especially moving around) .... I'm actually going to Beautiful Days this year too. 🙂

 

Might do next years Glastonbury (ticket permitting of course) then perhaps try to take a break and see how I feel after that.

[Crazyfool01]

On 7/7/2024 at 3:15 PM, angelin said:

Do you think punters ever email afterwards with ideas and feedback? Do they get a response? I never got tickets but I was too sick to go anyway however if I can make it next year reading all this is kind of putting me off. 

Crew and stewards do send out detailed responses one of my friends has given 4 pages of feedback . Every year they respond to stuff … the reason faithless got moved from glade . They also very much take feedback from sites such as this . They have crowd monitoring on cctv and by drones also 

[gooner1990]

2 minutes ago, Crazyfool01 said:

Crew and stewards do send out detailed responses one of my friends has given 4 pages of feedback . Every year they respond to stuff … the reason faithless got moved from glade . They also very much take feedback from sites such as this . They have crowd monitoring on cctv and by drones also 

 

I will be sending something in as we had an absolute nightmare on arrival, worst entrance for me in 16 visits.

 

As a wider point I personally think they are selling too many tickets now and/or there is are people getting in en mass who shouldn't be there and its starting to hamper my enjoyment of attending.

[Leyrulion]

1 hour ago, gooner1990 said:

 

From what I understand they now sell 142,000 regular punter tickets and then performers, volunteers, paid workers etc its another 68,000 (capacity 210,000)

I think 142,000 was being mentioned when it was allowed to increased from 203k to 210k around 2019. They ended up using only 3k of that for general admission, the other 4k was put into the staff/performer/other pot. All the current success quote 138, and sources from 2019 say 142.

 

Either way the 7k did get used and however it's split that's the very limit of the overall capacity increase since 2014 they've been able to use.