Glastonbury : the ticket buying nightmare

PS:News' John Earls yesterday spoke exclusively to Glastonbury Festival, ticket sellers aloud, and BT, about the problems buyers experienced trying to get their hands on that golden ticket, and how things might be improved for next year. Parts of those comments are used below - you can find the full details of that on Channel 4 Teletext page 353.

Just one...
All tickets were sold by aloud, via their single website and one call centre, and both the website and the telephones were overloaded by the demand.

Why was just one outlet chosen to sell tickets? Michael told PS:News: "because we're able to keep a tighter control on security, and that was my main concern this year. Like many fans, I didn't care at all for tickets sold by touts last year. We chose aloud as the agents because Way Ahead are the best ticket agents in the country. They cope better than anyone". Way Ahead run aloud's ticketing systems for them.

Aloud's Website
Maureen Corish at aloud told PS:News that hits on the website were massively more than last year, and that nobody could have anticipated the demand. Having now seen the hit numbers, eFestivals will have to agree that the increase was astounding, but even so, we believe it could have been better anticipated.

She also said "At no point did it crash altogether". Well, without having been there, we can't know for sure. But we were were carrying remote techy tests at points through the night and day, and these gave a different impression.

Telephones
Firstly, eFestivals has had only had glowing reports of the helpfulness of the staff at aloud answering the phones. In what we're sure was a stressful time for them, they remained friendly and extremely helpful to all those who were lucky enough to speak to them.

Michael Eavis told PS:News there there 60 people working through the night. Our own unconfirmed information - originating from one of those call center staff - is that the numbers were lower. Aloud staff answering the phones said shifts ended at 1am. We're well aware that after 1am the amount of time required in the queuing system (having got a ring-tone and an answer) suddenly went from 5 minutes to over 30 minutes. It was claimed on the Festival's own website that there were 200 people answering the telphones during Friday. Again, we're not sure we believe this, as tickets would surely have sold faster.

When asked why people were getting a message saying "the network is busy", BT told PS:News "In exceptional circumstances, we have to protect the rest of the network. It's unfortunate for people trying to call that one number, but we have to take the wider view that we don't want to affect the rest of the phone system. It's very, very rarely that it happens."

Headliners
We know that each year Michael worries about tickets selling; this isn't surprising. In 1979, the Festival was a financial disaster, and each year he risks his farm to put on the event. But Glastonbury is now firmly established as a wonderful part of British cultural life, and with millions having attended over the years, everyone knows just how fantastic it is. The Festival would now sell out without any maga-acts on the bill.

Michael Eavis puts some of the blame for demand on the fact that the headliners are known. This is a rather stupid comment though, as Glastonbury is in the position to ask for secrecy from those acts. Further, Michael (or others at GF?) has spoken to various publications recently naming who is playing. All the blame cannot be put just on the bands.

Next Year...
Improvements obviously need to be made, but there is no perfect solution while demand outstrips supply.

Michael told PS:News "We'll be doing our darnedest to improve it. I'm not sure I want tickets to sell out in two hours on 2005, but I don't want people having so much aggro, too".

Maureen Corish from Aloud told PS:News "there was an exceptional demand that nobody could have predicted. We've seen that now, so we have to see what to do in future." When asked if enough people were manning the phones she said "Well, I don't want to say that yet. We will be having a series of meetings to best work out how to cope with this demand in future."

Latest Updates