:huh Something is not right here. Tickets sold out in 18 min. and there are scalpers selling them on line right away. How many tickets are there? How do the scalpers get availability to so many tickets so quickly? They have to be buying them in blocks. This is NOT the festivarian way. There must be something planet bluegrass can do about this. It really pisses me off. I did get my tickets but it is still not right. :huh :mad
I agree! How is it that you can only buy 4 tickets, yet somehow scalpers are able to make it so that the festival sells out in 12 min! I had 2 tickets in my cart and when I finally got through registering and dealt with several time out issues, it was sold out…at 9:12 a.m. MST. So sad. Thankfully, we had a group of friends who were all texting at the time and my other friend got 4, and is selling them to us for FACE, because that is normal and the festivarian way. Hope you are able to find decently priced tickets!
It is pretty bizarre that all of the sudden stub hub shows tickets for sale for about $400. Given the 4 tix limit you wonder if they really have them, or what the deal is. I do trust Planet Bluegrass to do all they can to limit this kind of scalping, and those money grubbing non-festivarians will find a way.
I’m thankful my transaction went through on the Planet and I got my tickets at about 9:14.
Ugghhh, I missed out by 9:12. Been going for 10 years with my group and not about to miss this one. If you know of any for sale at face or close to, please do let me know.
Given that I didn’t go through the ticket buying process this morning, I assume that everyone who did had to check off the “I won’t sell these above cost” similar to the one that was on the Town Park lottery application. I wonder if that “promise” is enough to allow Planet Bluegrass to follow the threads and cancel out any tickets trying to be scalped at a profit. I kinda doubt the legality of it, but I hope they try.
Apparently demand has become so high for tickets that ALL tickets probably need to be sold via lottery. I don’t see any other way, except raising supply (ain’t gonna happen) or diminishing demand through methods we would all hate (raising prices, lowering the level of artists, invoking huge rain or dust storms, moving the festival to the dead of winter, forbidding bacon, etc.).
It’s pretty amazing to see the growth of demand for tix. It seems like just 5 or 7 years ago that finding tickets was easy. It’s a pretty nice position to be in for PB (although there is added pressure to keep up the quality of the overall experience).
I’m sure there are a lot of people looking at this as a primo scalping opportunity, but any high-demand experience is going to bring out profiteering. I just pray that all this demand isn’t MAINLY from the growth of the ticket brokering and scalping businesses.
It does appear that single day tix are still available for all four days. So in a way the discount is now getting a 4 day pass and then full price is buying single day tix. At $280, for what you get, still a great deal, I think.
I wonder how many 4 day passes they sold.
Mathematically speaking, they sold 7000 to 8000 tickets in 16 min. This is selling right at 600 tickets a minute. That’s allot of tickets in a minute for only 4 at a time. It’s not that I don’t trust Planet Bluegrass to only sell 4 at a time. But WOW that’s 150 customers a minute, which is about 2.5 costumers a second buying 4 tickets at a time. Kind of makes you feel sorry for the phone, and cable system in Lyons.
Yeah, I was trying both by phone and online. Got through online right away, and then it kicked me out at the payment stage. Got through again in ten minutes and then it worked through the completion of the transaction. I’d have been really bummed if it came back then saying the tickets were sold out. All the while I was also dialing the phone, and only got busy signals.
:rolleyes Maybe scalpers will be left holding the bag if NO ONE ‘buys into’ their scheme. Unfortunate though, 'cause true fans go thru a lot to get theirs legitimately. Tar and feather the scammers, I say.
Scalper called “beardedgitz1” on ebay. Scumbag from Loveland. Trying to make a profit on the festivarians back. Anyone knows this person should give them a good ass whippin’. Really pisses me off. :mad
Gonna play devil’s advocate here… But, given the kind of experience people have at the festival year in and year out, combined with the recent history of quick sellouts, is it unreasonable to think the majority of those buying tickets right when they go onsale actually intend to attend the festival?
Oh no, I was trying to assume anything :). I was just astounded by the speed of time mathematically that the tickets were sold, that’s all. But yes, scalpers SUCK!!! :mad
It’s hard to believe that people will buy tickets thinking they might be going and post them at double the face value right away… Just sayin’ 
Agreed, the previous times we attended, 06 and 09, we got tickets within a week of the fest. Thought about going last year and were suprised at how fast they went. Luckily hit the lottery this time. If it were a perfect world, no one would buy over face value and the scalpers would lose their money.
There’s a guy on Stub Hub with a fake “listing” chastising another scalper for selling his Town Park pass so low - for a measly $600. He’s ticked that the other guy isn’t gouging festivarians quite enough. Seriously???
There are, what, 100 tickets for sale on Stubhub… That would be something like 1.25% of the total 4 day passes. I think it’s unlikely that even 10% of them were bought by scalpers - probably less than 5%. If that’s the case, it means that scalpers barely contributed to the tickets selling out early. Maybe if scalpers didn’t buy any, they would’ve sold out five minutes later.
I’m not saying it’s OK to scalp tickets. I think it’s one of the worst forms of opportunism, and I have never sold an extra for more than face value. These threads pop up every single year, and every single time, it’s more hysteria. Scalpers really aren’t making it much more difficult for you to obtain tickets. It’s really the people buying tickets for themselves who are making it most difficult for you to obtain tickets.
Here’s the response I got from the scalper on ebay. A true dickhead.
Dear petethebassguy,
do you really think i care? and it’s not the scalpers that suck it your own “festivarians” that choose to pay the inflated prices to line my pockets. i’ll see you there this year!!! or maybe not if you haven’t gotten tickets. this will be number 4 for me, love dancing my face off with a pocket full of cash!!!
- beardedgitz1
So is this cool? Is this what is supposed to happen at bluegrass?
You, sir, just hit the nail right on the head.
Gotta report those ticket scalping a-holes! Hopefully some action would come from the large amounts of ticket scalpers, they clearly do not care about the fest and people and just the money That was a crazy amount of people trying to buy and buying tickets in such a short period someone brought up! Around 6-7000 in a few minutes… I like the way that SCI does their ticketing through Baseline ticketing, they release a certain amount in monthly increments leading up to the festival. (I think Horning’s was the most obvious one) Then this can hopefully lead to less ticket scalping, and get tickets to fans who want to attend easier. Just a thought. Hope the scalping stops and everyone can get tickets for Face.
Regardless of the actual number of scalpers, or scalped tickets, it’s a heinous practice. In the interests of trying to prevent so much scalping, how about if actual humans in attendance at one of the festivals could buy next year’s tickets AT the festival? Or at least put down a deposit that would hold tix for the following year? This might exclude some newbies, but might also exclude some scalpers!