Glastonbury makes massive change to ticket buying process – leaving fans furious
GLASTONBURY bosses have made a massive change to the ticket buying process – but not all fans are happy.
Festival-goers would usually purchase tickets by refreshing the landing page in a bid to access the booking page when tickets went on sale.
They have now replaced it with the introduction of an online virtual queue and randomly assigned a number.
The change was confirmed today ahead of the sales next week, on the 14 and 17 November.
“The booking process itself for 2025 will be the same as in previous years, however, the way in which you join the booking process is changing,” a statement on the Glastonbury website said.
The booking process itself for 2025 will be the same as in previous years, however the way in which you join the booking process is changing.”
They clarified: “Rather than refreshing the holding page to attempt to access the booking page, this year, when the ticket sale begins (at 6pm or 9am respectively) everyone who is already on the glastonbury.seetickets.com page will randomly be assigned a place in a queue to access the booking process.”
But if you log on once the sale has started, you will be placed at the back of the queue, which will likely cause fans frustration.
They added: “Anyone who logs on once the sale has started will automatically be added to the back of the queue, so it’s important to make sure you are online ready at least a few minutes before the sale opens.
“Once you are in the queue, a progress bar will indicate how close you are to reaching the booking page.”
Bosses Michael and Emily Eavis have also warned: “Please do not refresh this page or use multiple devices or tabs or you may lose your place in the queue.”
Once you reach the front of the queue, you will be asked to enter the registration number and registered postcode for the lead booker and up to 5 other people for whom you are attempting to book tickets.
You will have 10 minutes to complete this page before your session expires, however tickets are not allocated at this point.
There are a number of instructions on the website that fans need to follow in order to bag themselves a ticket.
It says: “Once all of your information is correct, click confirm to enter the payment page, where you will need to check/amend your billing address, confirm your payment information, accept the terms and conditions, and complete check out within the allocated time.
“Please do not attempt to minimise the tab or open new tabs. If you move away from the tab you are on your session may expire.
“Any information entered after the timer expires will result in a failed transaction. Tickets are only allocated once your payment has been processed – so we would encourage you to enter your payment details swiftly (but accurately).
“If the amount of traffic on the website is particularly high, you may see a reduced version of the See Tickets booking site, with a minimal holding page. This does not mean the site has crashed.”
But some fans have raged that this could cause them to miss out on tickets.
One wrote: “So basically a different kind of nightmare.”
A second posted: “Imagine the scenes when you finally get through after an hour and see that they’ve introduced dynamic ticket pricing.”
A third said: “Would have made more sense if it was trialed for the resale last year first.”
“Complete b*****ks, say what you want about the previous system but it got as close as possible to rewarding people that tried the hardest,” a fourth commented.
This person fumed: “Rubbish, at least the old system rewarded persistence. Now anyone can join and have an equal chance, including the people who otherwise would leave and complain after a few mins of refreshing.”
Another angry person wrote: “Yeah this sucks. If they’re gonna do this, they may as well just do a full on ballot and send out codes randomly.”