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Saturday 22nd November, 2008

IC to lose out for Glastonbury 2004?

Posted: Jul 22nd 2003, 09:13

After all 112 000 tickets for this year’s Glastonbury festival sold out in under 24 hours, organiser Michael Eavis is trying to come up with a system to ensure that tickets get to the ‘right’ sort of people rather than to touts flogging them on E-Bay and other undesirable types.

He believes that students are an essential part of the festival atmosphere and wants to make sure that a significant portion of the tickets get to them at sensible prices – so far so good – but alas Felix has learnt that one of the ways he is thinking about doing this is by selling the first thirty thousand tickets to the NUS. This could leave IC students at a distinct disadvantage to other students across the country, as we would almost certainly be left to fight for the remainder of the tickets with the rest of the country, assuming that we stay disaffiliated.

In case you aren’t aware, Glastonbury is considered to be Britain’s – and probably Europe’s – premier music and performing arts festival. Although the festival is not just about music you get top artists playing from across the entire musical spectrum. This year’s highlights included such varied artists as Radiohead, REM, Fatboy Slim, The Streets, Squarepusher, Jimmy Cliff, The Darkness, Beth Orton, Royksopp, David Gray and the Sugababes. At its peak this year there were roughly one hundred and forty thousand people inside the new ‘superfence’ at Worthy Farm in Somerset.

Since there were a vast hoard of IC students who either paid way over the odds for Glastonbury tickets this year or who tried and failed to get tickets at all could this be the issue that swings the next NUS affiliation referendum, or will it spur your elected representatives into action to ensure that ICU receives its fair share of tickets from Mr Eavis?

There will be a full review of Glastonbury 2003 in the first Felix of term.

Alex C
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Comments

Re: IC to lose out for Glastonbury 2004?
With thirty thousand tickets to the NUS currently representing (by their own claim)5 million students, the whole of IC, proportionally, should receive seventy (and almost one of those for Wye). Yes, they would be seventy very happy students, but I doubt that would be enough to bring ICU into the NUS unless general opinion has changed significantly for other reasons in the last year.
Nichola
Re: IC to lose out for Glastonbury 2004?
Oh dear, Nics been doing maths again hasn't she? I don't know about Glastonbury, but Reading Festival is pretty splendiferwacky.
Cat
Re: IC to lose out for Glastonbury 2004?
Maybe ICU could persuade Reading or another such festival to give us tickets, rather than chasing Glastonbury? Convince them that NUS= "Mainstream," so in approaching ICU they would be reaching an "Alternative" student audience for whom Glastonbury does not cater, that would fit the image many are trying to maintain very well.
Nichola
Re: IC to lose out for Glastonbury 2004?
My brothers going to Reading this year and hes pretty alternative although I prefer the words flaming idiot. For starters his spellings worse than mine.
Cat
Re: IC to lose out for Glastonbury 2004?
although admittedly this would require a lot of good organization and management of money, why don't students that want tickets go to some kind of student-organized ticketing service, which could take student orders and money and then take all the tickets and collectively buy them. It would avoid problems of some students buying tickets too late.... But it would require good management as I said, nobody wants to see their money just lost or worse, stolen, and I'm not even sure that's legal (it's prolly illegal to distribute the tickets like that isn't it?). Still, it's an idea.
Hippieman
Re: IC to lose out for Glastonbury 2004?
But that would still require the "student-organized ticketing service" to be able to get hold of a large number of tickets, which they tried to avoid this year by only selling a couple to each caller, and the way tickets sold this year, you'd be lucky to get through on time once. So however its organised, the issue is availability of the tickets in the first place, which would mean a special advanced arrangement with the vendors.
Nichola
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