Will Burning Man sell out?

[Dr Helix]

As in tickets. I have no data, no inside info. But I just have a feeling based on three premises that it won't be the 45 minute in and out like last year and gasp! Might not sell out at all.

This what I base it on:

1. Last year's bad weather.

2. Canadian and international $$$ very weak right now.

3. Just because it can't sustain the momentum.

Feel free to disagree and prove me wrong. Again, this is a feeling, nothing else.

[Sham]

While I think it will still be a sell-out, there are many long time attendees that we camp with who are taking a year off. There will be many first timers coming to make up the gaps for the party poopers.

[mudpuppy000]

I'm betting it probably will. Tickets are so easy to resell there's not much risk. If people can't get rid of them before the burn then maybe next year won't sell out.

[Elliot]

Ever since last year's Burn, I've heard and read all this blather about foul weather, wind, and dust. What event did those people attend? Or what event did I attend? It cannot have been the same event. I remember waiting out a little dust-blow or two, which is absolutely par for the event.
Did the freak occurrence of heavenly weather in 2011 suddenly establish that abnormality as the new norm?
Methinks there's a wimp or two around here lately. Harrumph.

[Ratty]

It will sell out as fast as ever. 10 years ago nobody knew what it was. I compare it to the upswing in poker popularity due to the World Series of Poker coverage and internet gambling. We rode the wave of easy money right up until there was no more online gambling allowed. Then the surge of new players died off and we went back to normal. (Busy every day.) If BM is pushed aside by something better or it somehow gets ruined, then MAYBE some year it will decline. I don't see that happening this year.

I don't remember any dust storm except the day before the event opened.

[Captain Goddammit]

Ratty you've forgotten Friday then! We pretty much lost Friday to the blowing dust.
And Elliot, holy crap it was COLD, especially Saturday!
Weather-wise, relative to other years not including the mild '11-'12 that I skipped, '15 pretty much sucked.

Was that enough to reduce demand to below-capacity?
Hell no it'll sell out as fast as the servers can process the orders.

[lucky420]

It was a bitch of a year

Not really complaining, it's the desert, it's August it gets windy but were ya'll so wast d you don't remember it?

The wind was so constant it caused some of my monkey hut legs to be sawed off by rubbing against the rebar it was positioned over

[JohnEBGud]

The question is how many tickets above capacity could have been sold last year? Demand would have to decrease by that much in order not to sell out and I don't think that will happen. For me, the weather last year just added to the experience.

[some seeing eye]

Of course it will!

I think it was The Verve who said "it's not if you sell out, it's when you sell out". *

People say the general and OMG sales sell out in, what, 35 minutes? Actually you need to be in the queue within seconds to tens of seconds of the zero hour, then it takes 35 minutes to work through as many people as the queue has. Maybe people will get in later by hitting refresh, as people drop out of the queue due to technical issues, but those numbers are tiny. To get deeper you would need to talk to a software engineer at the ticketing company.

Double your entendre!

* If someone can track down an authoritative source for that quote, I would love to have it. Unfortunately The Verve was brought down by evil stoners and mighty copyright.

[BBadger]

Despite the weather, the cold, the bugs, and the horrendous trap music, I haven't really seen many posts/complaints by people saying their year sucked and that they wish they hadn't attended. People will buy up the tickets regardless expecting to be able to sell them later if not needed. For the event itself to dissuade people from attending, The Suck (tm) would need to be sustained for a few years to build an unpredictable reputation where it is risky holding onto a ticket that may not sell. Maybe that Suck could strand people outside the city. Then the scales would be tipped from "Next year was better" to "Next year will suck".

Aside from that, I expect nothing less than a ruinous 2008-esque recession repeat will temper demand. Even if it happened right now, the effects of that would come too late for this year.

[Simon of the Playa]

The Suck is Coming. Again...in Spades.

suckers.


bring your goddamn rubber waders.



so it is posted, so let it be done.

[Simon of the Playa]

trust me.

[Elliot]

Ah yes.... It was indeed unusually cold. And that's why I always bring plenty blankets for my bed, and thermal underwear too. Worked a number of 6 a.m. shifts -- peeled off the thermals after a couple hours, no worries.

[Token]

Did the pre-sale sell out?

That is the first step to a less than capacity event.

At a minimum we will learn how much is too much $ for tickets.

2005, 2009, and 2014 were all years when attendance dropped from previous year.

2001 was also rather flat after the miserable 1999 and 2000, weather wise.

Then we have 2011 and 2013 which were over capacity so there is that factoid as well.

Drops in attendance seem rather regular and cyclical.

[BeeWeeDee]

Of course they will sell out. Don't even try to get one. You're doomed.

[FlyingMonkey]

I heard it was canceled.

I think anyone dissuaded by the crummy but not epically bad weather will simply be replaced by someone else who couldn't get a ticket last year, has never gone, or embraces the dust & whatever weather the Playa throws our way.

Yes it will sell out.

Although I can't go this year so maybe they will sell all but 1 ticket. Hmmmmm.

[Raoul]

Did the pre-sale sell out?

I'm curious about this also. I read something last night that said it sold in less than 24 hours, but I seem to recall seeing somewhere here on ePlaya that tickets were still available beyond that timeframe.

[trilobyte]

I'm moving this over to the Tickets Discussion board, since that's a better fit for... tickets discussions.

In replying to your question, I believe a sellout is inevitable. In fact, I'll go even further to say that this year's main sale will be even crazier than the last.

Yes, last year's weather was harsh. Yes, it will chase some folks away. No need to call them weak-willed or imply they're not strong enough, it was seriously rough and some camps wound up damaging or losing expensive chunks of infrastructure. I don't see that playing a major factor in demand - if you look at the history of the event, the only time there was a significant drop in demand was during the housing crisis (and even that dip wasn't huge). The worst a bad weather year has done was make for a smaller increase in demand (picking numbers out of the air, instead of a 15% increase in demand it would be a 10% increase.... still an increase in demand for tickets).

Based on published reports, last year there were 80K registrations for the main sale (and each registered person could buy 1 or 2 tickets and 1 vehicle pass). Last year, the main sale had 40K tickets... so demand had outstripped supply by something like 3x (most people, but not all, purchase two tickets).

This year, there will only be 30K tickets available in the main sale. Burning Man will sell the same number of tickets in total, but changes in how many tickets are allocated to different things (DGS, Pre-Sale, Da Vinci art tickets, etc) mean that there will be 10K fewer tickets available on March 23. So even if demand does not increase AT ALL, the odds are that tickets will not only sell out... but they'll sell out more quickly than they did last year.

@Raoul - it sounds as if you're confusing reports from different sales (the pre-sale and directed group sale can take days). The main sale has sold out within 24 hours for many years now. With Ticketfly having greater capacity than previous ticketing partners, the event has been selling out in less time each year. In 2014 and 2015, the main sale sold out in under an hour.

Edited to add:
Having said that, I don't mean to dash anyone's hopes. 30K is still a whole lot of tickets, and even when people are not successful in the main sale the folks who are determined and hang in there are often able to find the tickets they need (either through STEP or after-market sales).

[Raoul]

it sounds as if you're confusing reports from different sales (the pre-sale and directed group sale can take days).

Found where I read about the pre-sale selling out in 24 hours - https://burners.me/2016/03/07/burner-burns/ - taken with the appropriately sized grain of salt.

[MrBeardy]

Sell out for sure. Lots of people I know missed out on registering for presale so that pushes even more people that would have otherwise bought early to instead test their luck in the main sale. I haven't seen any official word on the presale selling out, but that really has no tie to what will happen in regular sale as from here on out the main sale will always be a split second sell out due to the low cost of tickets and the ease to sell them at a later date compared to a presale one, which even still will be easy to sell once all the unlucky ones that don't get a ticket must go by any means possible. Best of luck to everyone! Hoping the Playa gods are on our side this year.

[trilobyte]

Take **anything** from that site with a grain of salt, they're known for running with inaccurate info on a quite regular basis. This year's pre-sale is actually still going on (at least it was as of 15 minutes ago). Keep in mind that it's limited, tickets are only available to those who had pre-registered for that sale. The important part, though, is that the Main Sale is a completely different beast than either the pre-sale or the directed group sale.

Looking back at my records, the last time the event took more than an hour to sell out was 2013.... and that was because of some server-side issues at the ticketing provider (not the company that Burning Man uses today).

[Slug]

Yes the general sale tickets will sell out. How fast is a function of server capacity, as Trilobyte said.

I feel the same about TTITD as I do about a beloved independent band. Yes, I want the band/event to do well and be popular thus sustaining their continued art that I LOVESOGODDAMNEDMUCH and don't expect to get for nothing. But at the same time, you don't want to let go of it being "yours"; when it's not popular you feel more intimately connected and your sense of possession over it is vindicated. This sometimes visceral tension will always exist for me, because I am an inherently selfish person. [There's nothing wrong with being a little selfish but I'm unwilling to go full Ayn Rand-y.]

So yea, general sale is gonna be the usual stampede for the foreseeable future.

[Ratty]

(((Slug))) Great post. That was a Slug hug.

[dustyfux]

2016 tickets will be sold out before 12:09PM PST, Wednesday August 3rd

[Purveyor2016]

Did you see the Burning of the Man on Saturday 2015? It was a show even Hollywood could not put on. For that reason alone, people will continue to flock to the Playa for the sheer spectacle of the event. We will be lucky to get tickets at all.

[Purveyor2016]

What dust?

[Captain Goddammit]

I don't even know anyone who gives half a fuck about the actual man burn. Black Rock City overshadowed that over a decade ago.

[Ratty]

Man burn? Do they still do that? I'm too busy checkin out the vehicles to watch the man burn. The most impressive, strangest and most beautiful car show in the world. Although, I watched the cargo cult man burn. (Pretending/hoping all the while that I would see lift off.)

[Dr Helix]

I don't even know anyone who gives half a fuck about the actual man burn. Black Rock City overshadowed that over a decade ago.

I don't care about the Man burn either. I still go but lay WAY back. I like the fireworks more than anything else. But what I do enjoy is going out the next morning for the "Breakfast on the Man" show. Greatest collection of soulful buners and burned out souls I've ever seen. People passed out in the embers and folks makin' eggs. People picking through the ashes looking for keepsakes. Music, dance, drunks. It's all there.

[ACfromSAC]

100% probability of a sell out. I'm HOPING for the reasons listed above (primarily the shift in currency values) that the demand will be slightly down from last year... but with 10,000 fewer tickets being available in the general sale, I bet it would sell out in less than a minute if the servers could handle it.