remi wrote:Last year when another festival's tickets went on sale, all three tiers became available at the same time, and 8 people purchased the most expensive tier before the first tier sold out. So, not many people, but some think of others before themselves. And why "not including presale"? I thought the purpose of having expensive presale tickets was to offset the price of the scholarship and low income tickets. Thats the only reason I purchased presale tickets. If because of my 2 presale tickets, one person gets to go to BM that wouldn't be able to otherwise, I feel like i've done my duty.
So let me get this straight: eight (8) people get up early in the morning, click at the exact moment to get the tier 1 tickets before some odd 8000 other people do, and then in the end--after all that stress--opt to buy the most expensive tickets they could have purchased for months afterwards?
I'm calling bullshit on that.
As for pre-sale tickets, no, they're
not to offset the scholarship tickets, and
never were. Traditionally, pre-sale tickets are for people to gift to people for something like Christmas or other events that happen far prior to the regular distribution of tickets, or just to get the ticket early (see pink's reply above). You get them early by paying more than you could otherwise if you had gotten up early and gotten in on Tier 1 and Tier 2. This year is different, and it seems the pre-sale's price premium is to capitalize upon those people who are scared into believing that they won't get a ticket through the main sale (and to test out the lottery system).
This is the only year that pre-sale tickets have sold for more than even the Tier 3 (as opposed to Tier 4) prices. Last year they were $280 each--$40 less than the regular sale price ($320). They didn't offset any costs for low-income or scholarship tickets, and they're actually a
bargain compared to standard prices. But this year...
Not wanting to sound like they're just bumping up the price to take advantage of pre-sale jitters, the stated price premium "helping" to offset low-income/scholarship tickets is, again, just
lip-service for those deluded enough to believe that the price premium is to benefit less well-off folk. It could have easily be covered by the cross-the-board price hike, and the elimination of Tier-4 this year. The elimination of Tier-4 means that the pre-sale tickets have also experienced a major price hike compared to previous years--ignoring that they added $30 on top of that--from $280 to $390. With the 200% more pre-sale tickets, just selling them at Tier-3 ($390) would've been a major increase in revenue. Who knows how many more low-income/scholarship tickets above 3,500 they'll even add, and if the price for these tickets will end up averaging higher than the previous scholarship/low-income ticket price separation.
Elliot wrote:Seems to me, the tiered prices would have been invented to bring in cash flow early in the year, so the office would have money to operate. Clearly, there is no practical way to identify thousands of people who truly have tight finances, so the year-round cash flow issue must be the reason.
Yes, that was the main reason behind it all. BMORG stuck that "save the cheaper tickets for the less fortunate" crap on there just to try and keep those "radical inclusion" vibes, when really that is just lip-service people seem to believe.
BMORG now has enough spare capital to not need the tiers to run the event without the initial influx of cash. However, it is still beneficial to sell the majority of your tickets early on just to ensure that population levels are known early, and that there isn't some mad dash at the end to get those tickets out to people who figure they have a whole 6-months to earn 0.01% interest on their $800.
Then, when the first two tiers began selling out on the first day of sales, the whole tier system would have become obsolete and terminated.
Well essentially it does right? The tiers are usually gone after a week, and then you have the remainder of the tickets at the regular price. This year, the tiers still serve some purpose in that people who are unwilling to spend more than a certain tier can opt to only be considered for it. There's no real harm in having them, even if they never serve, or ever really have, that lip-service load-of-wash about "saving tickets for less-fortunate burners."
trilobyte wrote:I'm still going to hold onto the notion that they're paying those savings forward in some other way. More food or drink shared with others, more blinky glowy shiny on their art. Mind you, I've never been very good at hanging onto the stuff…
That is a
far better use of those savings rather than the "pay for the most expensive tier you can" pointless gesture. I'd much rather benefit more people at the event with the money, or even just other campmates, than just have a single person save $70 or something on their specific trip.
As far as I'm concerned, if I'm saving just one person that $70, that's money that is saved out in the Default World, rather than being spent at the event for the enjoyment of those at the event. The net spending is the same, just allocated to more worthy causes.
