Glastonbury Festival wins award for ticketing solution

Digg! del.icio.us Facebook Comments (2)

Glastonbury Festival was presented the Innovation Award for its anti-touting ticketing system at last night's UK Festival Awards.

Michael Eavis picked up the award alongside Glastonbury Festival's Robert Richards, who helped poineer the revolutionary solution.

Glastonbury Festival has been waging a war against touts ever since it established its 'super-wall' in 2002 to keep out fence jumpers.

While the move helped keep out those who didn't have a ticket, it opened up an unprecedented black market as touts sought to profit from the sell-out festival.

With tickets regularly snapped up in a matter of hours by true fans, touts were for years able to sell huge numbers of passes on sites like eBay for hugely inflated prices.

But this year's system limited purchases to two per person (apart from families) and demanded photo ID be shown at the gate.

It has since been heralded for reducing online touting to almost zero and set a standard that other festivals are now working towards.

Other nominees for the Innovation Award at last night's UK Festival Awards included Download for streaming its main stage performances online and the paperless ticketing solution pioneered by TixMob.

Last year it was won by Carling for its 'Cold Beer Amnesty' where punters could swap warm beer for cold Carling.

• Event Information
• The UK Festival Awards 2007
• Glastonbury Festival 2008

• Get VF Festival Alerts Direct to Your Desktop