Glasto number-fiddling shocker
As you may or may not know, Glastonbury is nowadays so confident about its brand that it requires people to register personal information, including a photograph, with the festival - before they can even try their hand at buying a ticket. Ostensibly, it's to stop touts. There has been some opposition to this move which was introduced last year, but it's also much appreciated by some people: it won the innovation award at the UK festival awards, which was awarded by public vote.
Anyway so the thing is that Glasto-obsessed persons on the festival message boards have been tracking the registration numbers to see how much competition they're going to have for tickets. (When you register, you're given a number, which starts at 1,000,001 and goes up from there) They've been going up at a fairly sedate pace - a few thousand a day, and, if anything, the rate's been slowing up 'til now. Some people thought that the festival might be worried about how this could look to people from outside, if it stayed low and it became apparent that fewer people wanted to buy tickets than last year.
Then! On Tuesday, the numbers suddenly leapt by 10,000 in less than an hour. Some people thought it was a cack-handed attempt to boost the numbers. I thought this seemed unlikely, why would any idiot do that?
Then it went back to normal, 3,000-odd the next day.
Then 9,000-odd. Then 9,000-odd again. Something seemed a bit fishy about this to me.
Turns out the numbers have been going up in threes for the last 3 days. See here. How very desperate-looking.
Anyway so the thing is that Glasto-obsessed persons on the festival message boards have been tracking the registration numbers to see how much competition they're going to have for tickets. (When you register, you're given a number, which starts at 1,000,001 and goes up from there) They've been going up at a fairly sedate pace - a few thousand a day, and, if anything, the rate's been slowing up 'til now. Some people thought that the festival might be worried about how this could look to people from outside, if it stayed low and it became apparent that fewer people wanted to buy tickets than last year.
Then! On Tuesday, the numbers suddenly leapt by 10,000 in less than an hour. Some people thought it was a cack-handed attempt to boost the numbers. I thought this seemed unlikely, why would any idiot do that?
Then it went back to normal, 3,000-odd the next day.
Then 9,000-odd. Then 9,000-odd again. Something seemed a bit fishy about this to me.
Turns out the numbers have been going up in threes for the last 3 days. See here. How very desperate-looking.