Is there ever going to be a year that ticketing isn't a hot mess?

[Sajun777]

502, 522, 404, 404, 404, 404, 522, etc.

[WeezerMike]

I tried to reply to your post and got a 503 error. Such comedy!

[Captain Goddammit]

Well... there’s 2000... tickets could be bought in record stores, or at the gate.
If you mean upcoming years, well, that’s unfortunate. With eleventy zillion people after 30 or 40 thousand main sale tickets at the same instant, it’s gonna be a hot mess.

[Token]

Absolutely!

When the BLM issues a permit for only 50K, the whole ticket sales process will be irrelevant as it will be all DGS.

[elblueblazer]

I got the worst tease, I made it to the last page. I choose my tickets and it went white.

[Scooter9]

I don't understand why we have to stand in line. How about: week 1: everyone who intends to buy, registers. week 2: xx,000 are chosen at random and sent a purchase link. Everyone else gets added to the wait list in random order. They have 24 hours to purchase and then they lose their chance and people get fed in from the wait list.

No real-time button mashing.
No trying to be a millisecond faster than someone else.
No penalties for people who can't be at a web browser at 12:00 PDT.

That's how we do it at Firefly (the Vermont regional burn) and it works fine, is low pressure, and doesn't play favorites. (It's actually a bit more complicated, because we allow groups that want to all-go-or-none-go, but the basic idea still works.)

Also: there must be events in the world where 70,000 people descend on a website at once. Don't major sporting events and concerts sell out in seconds, despite having tens of thousands of people vying simultaneously for tickets? How do they manage it?

[XPTom]

"Woodstock 50" tickets go on sale 4/22. Let's see how they manage …..100K tickets and 27K campsites.... happy/unhappy ratio on 4/23 will be interesting.

[Spadge63]

I think the main sale should a lottery like we did in 2012. Register for the lottery and if you’re offered a ticket, you have 72 hours to purchase it. Maybe even go with 1 ticket per person.

[wraith]

There will absolutely be a year where ticketing isn't a hot mess.

Just gotta wait until the BLM cuts the permit numbers in half, and they have a couple years where all that shows up are the plug and play vacationers with nothing to gawp at but honorarim projects.

[Sham]

Here's what (arguably) happened in the lottery of 2012.

People applied for and won a spot to buy tickets to Burning Man. Simple!

The system was gamed by those with the means to float the money and have LOTS of friends and relatives (not attending) apply for the lottery. Many non-burners won the lottery and bought the tickets. Theme camps found themselves way short on enough tickets to make their camps happen. In effect, the tickets disappeared into the hands of people who had no intention of coming. These were not scalpers, but friends/relatives of burners.

Some people were in control of possibly 10 tickets, but no one wanted to offer them up until they were released and mailed. The panic was crazy and no could explain where the tickets were and why the theme camps had nearly none.

The org didn't want to mail tickets early, due to counterfeiters and scalpers. Once tickets were mailed in June-ish, they started circulating and things settled down. Still, a lottery is ripe for this kind of gaming.

[JayBobBoy]

Short answer: NO!

There will forever be a large group of people left out...And they're all really bitter right after the sale! I would know!

[AntiM]

You're going to need a flux capacitor for that.

[Green eyes]

nope