Simon Willison’s Weblog

Glastonbury screw-up

6th April 2004

I went last year, I went the year before, I’m pretty sure I went the year before that, but this year I’m staying home. The muppets running the online ordering system apparently decided that a couple of Windows 2000 servers could handle 130,000 ticket sales in 24 hours. They got hit by 2,000,000 hits in the first five minutes. Admitedly, that’s going to be tough for anything to handle (maybe it’s a job for Google’s super-platform) but after last year’s 23 hour sell out anyone could have told them this year was going to be a whole lot tougher.

This BBC article has plenty of stories that match my own. I tried persistently over the space of 12 hours, filled out the form multiple times, was repeatedly told the tickets were all sold out when I knew that they weren’t and finally received a screen telling me I’d made it. The confirmation email never turned up. Bloody marvelous.

I just hope they sort out a sane way of distributing the tickets for next year.