They think local ticket allocation for the 2019 festival has "gone wrong"

Local Glastonbury residents are demanding more ticket allocation for next year’s festival.

Michael Eavis once again held back a number of full weekend tickets for local people who were not successful in buying tickets when they went on sale – these local tickets went on sale last week (October 18).

However, residents are calling the sale ‘ridiculous,’ asking Eavis to provide more tickets to the 2019 event with a petition titled: Make Michael/Emily Eavis hold back more local tickets for Glastonbury Festival!! At the time of writing, 482 people have signed it.

“Glastonbury Festival is pretty great. But not when you are outside the festival dealing with the back lash with no ticket and living locally,” the description for the petition reads.

“We deal with a lot of s**t being local to the festival – traffic being the number one issue, practically making the whole of the region gridlocked, as well as noise and pollution (*cough* rivers – decline in marine life since the festival *cough*), also general interference.

“Every year in my memory locals have had a good chance of getting tickets which makes this all bearable. This year something has clearly gone wrong.

“You may have seen Twitter posts or articles in the local press but a lot of locals are left frustrated as a large proportion will have to deal with the festival without the relief that at least I have a ticket so all’s good!

“Local people’s money is just as good as the rest of country’s so sell us some more, there’s clearly demand.”

The petition adds: “Local tickets sold out in eleven minutes on Thursday (October 18) and three minutes on Saturday (October 20) which is unheard of for locals.

“So sort us out please Mike.” Locals also claim that people who live in other areas used local addresses to buy tickets.

Glastonbury responded to the petition in a written statement. “We wish it was possible for everyone who wanted to get a Glastonbury ticket to be able to book one, however with almost 2 million people registered for tickets – and 135,000 available – it is unfortunately inevitable that the majority of people who were hoping to book tickets will have missed out.

“Although our data shows that a significant proportion of the tickets sold in the general sale earlier this month did go to those living close to the festival, we actually made more tickets available in this year’s locals-only sale than ever before. It remains very important to us to give locals that extra chance.”

They added: “In fact, we also added a second local online ticket sale, to give locals an extra opportunity to book tickets. However ultimately we are unable to guarantee that every local resident will get a ticket every year, simply because demand significantly outstrips supply. The locals tickets sold out quickly in 2016 (for the 2017 festival) too, taking just 20 minutes to sell online. This year’s local allocation took 16 minutes between the two sales.

“In terms of why demand is higher – that’s absolutely across all of our ticket sales, not just the local ones. The festival is lucky enough to be very popular right now – particularly after the fallow year.

“It’s also worth pointing out that thousands of residents who live in the immediate vicinity of the festival site are actually offered complimentary tickets as a demonstration of our appreciation for any inconvenience that the festival causes those living closest to the site.

“There are still a number of opportunities for local residents who don’t yet have tickets to attend the festival, though. Details of the Sunday day ticket sales (which are only open to local residents) will be released in the next few weeks, and there will also be a ticket resale in mid-late April of any cancelled tickets.

“There are also many other ways for locals to get involved, volunteering with local steward groups, getting involved with charities operating onsite, joining the recycling volunteers, or other work and volunteering opportunities.

“In response to the question of whether people from outside the area could pretend to be locals and buy tickets in the local sale, we would consider that to be fraudulent activity, and any tickets purchased in that way would be cancelled.

“We understand that all this doesn’t make it any less frustrating for those who missed out this time, but we really do appreciate the support of everyone in the local community who registered and tried for tickets.”

Glastonbury 2019 takes place at Worthy Farm on June 26-30.