For most arts organizations, a sold out show, event or festival is good news. According to the NY Times article "Burning Man Festival Regulars Lose Out on Tickets" - that may not be the case for organizers/arts managers of the famous Burning Man Festival this year. Burning Man is a weeklong festival that has annually been taking place outdoors in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada since 1986. The festival consists of interactive and improvised art installations that culminates in the incineration of a gigantic sculpture, usually known as the Burning Man. Last year was the first time the event was sold out when their first-come-first-served ticketing system was replaced by a lottery system which was thought to be a more equitable system.
The issue(s)? 1)The organizers of the event do not have enough tickets for all the 80,000+ people who signed up for the event and 2) the ones that do have tickets are not even veteran Burners (returning festival attendees), but scalpers who are selling tickets for a higher price on Stubhub and Craigslist. Organizers of the festival have come to this conclusion based on complaints entered on Twitter, Facebook, Blog posts, and online news claims. The festival claims that ‘it makes it difficult to distinguish between veteran Burners, loathed scalpers and first-timers’.
Burning Man Festival sounds like it needs the assistance of a better Box Office software, if they even use one. Considering the Ovation Ticket software demonstration last week, the outdoor festival needs an upgrade - if they were only a smaller organization that fit the Ovation Ticket client profile. The organization can benefit from the web-based box office since the event itself happens outdoors and since there’s an issue of patron control - Ovation Tickets offers features through their Ticketing and CRM that could help organize their patrons better.
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