With Insomniac Events opening the opportunity to purchase tickets to their feature festival, Electric Daisy Carnival this past week (November 1st) a lot of you might be asking yourselves, “Do I really need to have my ticket 8 months ahead of time?” It has gone pretty far the lengths some of us have to go to, to attend a festival. Nothing wrong with the prices that EDC is offering, I paid the about the same earlier (maybe a $20 difference) this year and it was well worth it. Also, I did buy my ticket at their first pre-sale, which was in March! So if I buy a ticket this go around I would have spent money on two, separate (Las Vegas) EDC’s in a span of less than 8 months!
Do I buy 2 EDC tickets or Christmas presents this year?
It is certainly understandable for organizers to get their tickets out early to drive up hype, gauge reach and even generate some early funding to produce the best possible festivals. But the adverse effects that fans have to go through such as scalpers, threat of sell out and being broke way too early, has definitely tarnished the luster that these once unique festivals thrived upon. Some might raise questions of how commercial they are becoming.
| Festival | Dates Held | Pre-sale date | Days apart | Approx 2011 Attendance | Pre-sale Lowest Price |
| Coachella | April 13-15 & 20-22, 2012 | June 3, 2011 | 315 | 225,000 over 3 days | $269.00 |
| Burningman | August 29- September 5, 2011 | January 19, 2011 | 222 | 53,963 | $210.00 |
| Electric Daisy Carnival | June 8-10, 2012 | November 1, 2011 | 220 | 230,000 over 3 days | $215.00 |
| Ultra Music Festival | March 23-25, 2012 | October 1, 2011 | 174 | 150,000 over 3 days | $149.00 |
These are some of the most popular festivals in America that have set up ridiculously advanced pre-sale dates.
Coachella- Probably the main reason for festival organizers offering these pre-sales is the amazingly fast sell out of 2011′s Coachella. 6 days. That’s all it took for this festival to sell out after the lineups were officially announced. Now it’s not to say that tickets weren’t on sale before the announcement but it caught many people off guard and was a feeding frenzy for scalpers across the board.
The Good: To combat another early sell out, Coachella offered a pretty sweet 1 week pre-sale opportunity where they would let people either pay in full for the ticket ($269.00) or a layaway plan where customers could put down 10% and have equal monthly payments deducted each month leading up to the event, reducing the upfront cost significantly and still guaranteeing the spot.
The Bad: Goldenvoice is promising the exact same show on two separate weekends. I applaud them if they can achieve this, but any of number of things can go wrong to create a whole different experience, from contract disputes to safety issues, weather to even permit requirements. A number of little things can create a huge disparity in the experiences and if I bought my ticket over 300 days in advanced and that happened, I would be livid. On the other hand, if they pull this off it can be the greatest move ever made in this fast growing industry.
Burning Man- Now, although Burning man isn’t technically a music festival or even a company that strives to make a profit, their annual tradition of offering “early-bird” tickets in January at significant discounts has always generated a lot of interest for this unique event. This year, they were overloaded with requests when offering the various price tiers during the online pre-sale that the ticket vendor’s servers crashed causing delays as long as 8 hours to place an order.
The Good: Burning Man offers the various lower end price tiers on a first come first serve basis as well as low-income and scholarship opportunities for people to attend. With this being my first year I was able to get the super cheap scholarship ticket which allowed me to enjoy my first burn without murdering my pocket.
The Bad: Probably hailing much of it’s fame and brand from being arguably the worlds largest fringe/hippie/”do-what-the-fuck-you-want-down-with-the-man” gathering, it was sad to see this event selling out for the first year ever. Once again, the scalper frenzy was on seeing tickets sell as high as $1,500! The irony the playa played into with the “No Cash” environment that is instilled within the community.
Ultra Music Festival: With Ultra having it’s most successful festival this past year and expanding to three day’s for the first time, they were the first EDM organizer to offer such an early pre-sale opportunity and at only 149.95 it was a pretty decent deal. With EDM growing faster than ever Ultra saw the opportunity and capitalized on the eagerness of their fans. But has this small capitalization started a trend that we can never recover from again?
The Good: The opening price of 149.95 was pretty decent for all three days. Rewarding your fans for purchasing early and supporting your cause is one way to set off the perceived greed. Too bad it didn’t last long.
The Bad: Only a month from it’s opening pre-sale date the price has doubled and a GA three-day pass costs $299.95! Ultra shows off both sides to having a pre-sale and it’s kind of scary for us who love to attend these festivals but can’t afford to pay so far out.
So, while looking over the various festivals and the pre-sale opportunities, what can work for both the organizers and their customers? We all want to attend, but don’t want to have to sacrifice so far out to guarantee our spot. It’s true, pre-sales are optional, but these events are selling out and garnering so much more attention than before. Can you help us find a compromise? There are various pros/cons available to both sides but forcing me to decide 8 months in advance to buy a ticket is appalling. Hopefully these organizers realize that buying so far out isn’t attainable by everyone, especially their core fans. Or maybe this is how exclusive festivals are becoming, hopefully the former is in place.
But beyond this issue that has risen along with the industry, thanks again for all the awesome experiences you have shown me, I look forward to many more in the future.
Photo Credit
Video Credit - Insomniac Events & EyeWax
Video Credit - Sam O’hare
Video Credit- Remash
Video Credit- Final Kid
Related posts:
- Ultra Music Festival 2012, Early Bird Tickets On Sale October 1st
- Coachella 2012 Tickets and Coachella Payment Plan Tickets On Sale NOW! For A Limited Time Only!
- Coachella Music Festival - Indio, CA - April 15-17, 2011
- Coachella 2012 Dates Announced! April 13-15 and April 20-22! Two Weekends!
- EDC Vegas 2011 Announcements: New Venue, 3rd Day Added, Tickets On Sale April 23rd
