Today was the day when festival enthusiasts world-wide fought to get Glastonbury tickets, as they went on sale, over 8 months before the festival commences. Shannon McNamee has the story…
October brings with it many things. Colder nights, even shorter days, Halloween and the stress that comes with Glastonbury tickets. Yes. Glastonbury, the most famous and widely acclaimed festival this side of the Atlantic.
Over 1 million people pre-registered for the sale today, with only 120,000 tickets up for grabs. And yes, they’re on sale in October, with the festival a full eight-and-a-half months away.
At this time every year there is a virtual scramble for tickets with people all over the world sitting at their laptops clicking refresh on the website every 10 seconds, and hitting redial on their phones, as the website has crashed and the phone lines are jammed. This is Glastonbury, folks.
I myself awoke just on time to observe this cyber battlefield, not even fending for tickets for myself. Twitter was my medium and my God, the masses were taking to the micro-blogging site to express their frustration and disappointment. Later came the delight.
The site routinely crashed and punters were left unable to buy tickets at all for about half an hour. Then, things got moving again and good ol’ Glasto was selling 3,000 tickets per minute, according to See Tickets, the festival’s ticket merchants.
Now selling approx 3000 tickets a minute. Again, we're really sorry for that first half hour and good luck to everyone who's trying
— See (@seetickets) October 6, 2013
Alas! 1 hour and 27 minutes after the tickets went on sale, they were sold out. All 120,000 of them, leaving tens of thousands of fans disappointed and ticketless, but with £50 pounds extra in their pockets.
The fact that a music festival can not only sell out in this economic climate, but sell out fast, with fans fighting for its tickets, showcases its majesty. Glastonbury is miles above the rest, and will be for the forseeable future. Are there any festivals that can contest with Glasto on such a large scale? Or is it really the pinnacle of festival culture?
