Buying tickets for your favorite event is supposed to be a joyous experience. However, for the devoted Burner community, this was not the case. Burning Man held their main ticket sale last week. 23,000 tickets were ready to be sold and anticipation was high. Unfortunately, the site crashed almost instantly, leaving fans in anguish. Many complained about numerous technical glitches and site crashes as soon as they tried to hit “purchase.”
Burning Man apologized for the incident on their blog. In previous years they had used Ticketfly and most things worked fine. This year, they switched companies. This company was kept mysterious at the start of these issues, and only named days after the incident. ShowClix has now been identified as the company that contributed to this disaster.
Insiders told Billboard that Burning Man is one of the most technically complicated ticketing events in the industry. It was clearly too complicated for ShowClix. The event used a multi-tiered registration system that will actually filter out people who don’t share their values. This being their principles of gifting, communalism, and participation.
Ticket scalpers have longed tried to infiltrate their system. Burning Man actually banned some automated software that allows them to jump in front of the line. One Burning Man Blog had a few thoughts on the whole issue:
“Even if it had gone perfectly from a technical perspective, the vast majority of those participating would not have been able to purchase a ticket as demand significantly outstripped supply.”
Next year you can either expect Burning Man to have a new ticketing service or a completely updated one – hopefully.