For
such a popular and worthy festival, which has grown and at
times outgrown itself, due to overwhelming and increasing
popular demand, rather than concentrated commercial marketing,
Glastonbury has its fair share of problems. Organiser and
working owner of the Worthy Farm Festival site, Michael Eavis
has the best of intentions as far as ensuring that true festival
fans have first access to tickets, but best intentions don’t
always work out!
The idea seemed reasonable – tickets for this year’s
Glastonbury Festival were to be made available only by phone
or e-mail applicants, they were put on sale at 8.00 in the
evening, to allow people usually at work during the day
to have the time to apply. Last year, the 112,000 tickets
- costing £105 each - were bought within 24 hours,
iy was thought that middle-aged professionals made multiple
bookings from their offices, using their credit cards. Michael
Eavis complained that there were not enough young people
present. He believes the 8pm start will make tickets "more
readily available to people who were at school, college
or work last year and missed out".
They were also to use debit not credit cards and only 2
tickets per applicant would be available, all this was aimed
at stopping ticket touts –‘scalpers’,
getting hold of large numbers of tickets to sell on at vast
profit. Eavis said, "In the past touts have used six
or seven credit cards to buy bulk tickets and then sold
them on for three, four and more times face value. Most
people have only one debit card, so that will help."
Every ticket is intended to bear the name of the buyer and
festival-goers may be asked to prove their identity to ensure
they did not strike a deal with a tout
But the gremlins kicked in and most of it didn’t work.
I sat in a pub with a determined woman who’s thumb
must by now have repetitive strain injury from the number
of attempts she made to get past a continual engaged tone,
she apparently tried till 3.30 am, getting nowhere, rose
early tried again, and then checked web-sites and help lines
, eventually finding a site that came up with tickets in
no time at all. Dedication and determination, now all the
tickets are sold, but nobody’s quite sure who to,
and where they came from.
Michael Beavis has put an apology on the Glastonbury web-site
which states:
