This is how it SHOULD have been done.

[Patamon]

The whole ticket madness could have been easily solved by doing this instead...

#1: Same price, no tiers. Make the tickets all the same price. If your money is so tight that you cant go because you need to save $80 on a ticket, then you probably shouldn't be going in the first place.

#2: Make it a REGISTERED event, not a TICKETED event. i.e. use the same method that they use at Conventions etc. You pay $350 (or whatever) and you are now Registered for Burning Man. You'll get your Registration thingy with barcode and name (like EE passes) in the mail, and that pass is good for YOU and YOU only. Cannot be sold or traded.

#3: First come, first serve. Since you can now only register FOR YOURSELF, there will be far less of an inital speculative demand. and dickheads like ebay and stubhub will no longer be able to scam people.

#4: Once the REGISTRATIONS are maxed out (60K, whatever) registration is closed.

#5: If you have to cancel, you have until July 31st to cancel and get a refund.

#6: From August 1st, to August 20th, 2nd round Registration is open (again first come first serve) based upon the number of cancelations. so if 4,000 people canceled, that opens up 4,000 new slots.

#7: On August 20th, no more registrations.

#8: Bring your ID and Form to the playa, and you're good to go. If your a hippy who cant deal with having an ID, see #1 above.

Badda bing. problem solved. Thankyou, I charge no fee for saving Burning Man, just get me fucked up on the playa.

[Ugly Dougly]

Yeah, the increasing price/tier situation just stinks. How can it be worth one price in January and another in May unless somebody's hunting for a profit?

[matt_freedman]

Totally agree with your proposed solution. I've used will-call for many years and had no problem at the gate. I show them my ID, it is matched to my name in the database, and they hand me my ticket. I also bring along the printout of my confirmation email just in case there is an issue.

Making the tickets a single price is totally reasonable given how the current tier system is not serving any rational purpose (other than allowing scalpers to reap larger profits). The lower tier prices were supposed to reward veteran Burners who could commit early and lacked resources. These folks would be better served through a separate mechanism -- a tranche of low-income/artist/scholarship/performer reduced price tickets that are available only through an application process. These tickets should be hard-coded to the applicant and non-transferrable.

The result of the lottery was entirely predictable. I talked with a friend who trades on Wall Street and he broke out laughing, saying that he could have predicted this result after reviewing the system for less than 5 minutes. Didn't the BMORG folks make any efforts to understand how the market would respond? Didn't they realize that veteran Burners would only submit for their own needs while scalpers employed armies of drone accounts to scoop up tickets that are literally a no-lose financial proposition?

So sad.

[beef]

As burners we need to accept that the ticketing process happens in the outside world as entry to our world. What this means is that scalpers/speculators etc. will attempt to profit from any supply/demand imbalance. This proposed system will work best in the following ways as the prior post outlines:

1) Create a single price ticket, show ID to validate your ticket at the gate.
2) Create a reduced rate pool for those who apply and qualify.

The money will either go to scalpers or to BMORG, if you think the lottery is bad this year, next year it will be 10X worse. Regular burners who felt screwed by the lottery will have every one they know applying for tickets on their behalf and the secondary market trading will be nuts. You could get 300,000 applications for the tickets next year because the real market value of a ticket is about $400 -- so every lower priced tier ticket is guaranteed money for those who can get them.

If I am a scalper, I set up 30 drone accounts, at a 30% hit rate I accrue 18 tickets at an average price of about $330. I can resell those on stub hub or whatever for at least $500 netting a profit of about $1,500 without taking any risk, the worse that happens is that the tickets sell at face value. This is the kind of inefficiency that the broader concert ticket scalper market will swarm on...

[JStep]

As burners we need to accept that the ticketing process happens in the outside world as entry to our world. What this means is that scalpers/speculators etc. will attempt to profit from any supply/demand imbalance.

Precisely!

As this fiasco has unfolded, I keep having this recurring notion that this situation might be (in one form or another) inevitable as the Burner Culture of anti-commercialism, egalitarianism, and community minded ethics collides with the reality of a capitalist market. Obviously BM has always straddled the line, creating this world within the dictates of that world. Maybe it was bound to happen eventually in one area or another where the bubble grew to such size that reality conflicts with the ideal and human nature takes over.

Just speculation.

Moving on...

[Arcticcircle]

Totally agree with your proposed solution. I've used will-call for many years and had no problem at the gate. I show them my ID, it is matched to my name in the database, and they hand me my ticket. I also bring along the printout of my confirmation email just in case there is an issue.

Making the tickets a single price is totally reasonable given how the current tier system is not serving any rational purpose (other than allowing scalpers to reap larger profits). The lower tier prices were supposed to reward veteran Burners who could commit early and lacked resources. These folks would be better served through a separate mechanism -- a tranche of low-income/artist/scholarship/performer reduced price tickets that are available only through an application process. These tickets should be hard-coded to the applicant and non-transferrable.

The result of the lottery was entirely predictable. I talked with a friend who trades on Wall Street and he broke out laughing, saying that he could have predicted this result after reviewing the system for less than 5 minutes. Didn't the BMORG folks make any efforts to understand how the market would respond? Didn't they realize that veteran Burners would only submit for their own needs while scalpers employed armies of drone accounts to scoop up tickets that are literally a no-lose financial proposition?

So sad.

Eloquent. +1

[u2pilot]

Not a bad plan, but it could be better:

a) I've gone to conferences, but I've never had to pay 6 months in advance. The analogy is imperfect.

b) Let Tix be transferable, but only through the BORG. Photo ID must be faxed in name of original buyer. Perhaps a $20 fee applies to cover the labor.

c) Let people buy 2 tix so easier to take wife/gf etc. If you have 2 tix in your name, one can be used for a second person in the same car. Makes it easy to swap-out wife or gf between purchase and event.

[lessrules]

The whole ticket madness could have been easily solved by doing this instead...

#1: Same price, no tiers. Make the tickets all the same price. If your money is so tight that you cant go because you need to save $80 on a ticket, then you probably shouldn't be going in the first place.

#2: Make it a REGISTERED event, not a TICKETED event. i.e. use the same method that they use at Conventions etc. You pay $350 (or whatever) and you are now Registered for Burning Man. You'll get your Registration thingy with barcode and name (like EE passes) in the mail, and that pass is good for YOU and YOU only. Cannot be sold or traded.

#3: First come, first serve. Since you can now only register FOR YOURSELF, there will be far less of an inital speculative demand. and dickheads like ebay and stubhub will no longer be able to scam people.

#4: Once the REGISTRATIONS are maxed out (60K, whatever) registration is closed.

#5: If you have to cancel, you have until July 31st to cancel and get a refund.

#6: From August 1st, to August 20th, 2nd round Registration is open (again first come first serve) based upon the number of cancelations. so if 4,000 people canceled, that opens up 4,000 new slots.

#7: On August 20th, no more registrations.

#8: Bring your ID and Form to the playa, and you're good to go. If your a hippy who cant deal with having an ID, see #1 above.

Badda bing. problem solved. Thankyou, I charge no fee for saving Burning Man, just get me fucked up on the playa.

#1 willing to agree (on the single price part)
#2 totally and completely disagree
#3 agreeable
#4 agreeable
#5 agree
#6 agreeable
#7 agreeable
#8 totally disagree (I am not a hippy and I do have an ID, but BM should not go in that direction)

registering to buy would be acceptable , but registering to enter would not acceptable

[amalin]

nice job!