Do the math: over 50% of tickets went to scalpers

[Killbuck]

I was a fire information officer for the US Forest Service. In every single fire I ever worked, the local population, wanting a reason for the fire, would quickly blame the Forest Service for starting the fire. In reality zero true. They could not blame a faceless arson, or careless camper or a lightning strike... they needed a bureaucracy to blame. In some ways this is little different. The math can be as suits us... 2 + 2 is 4, but so is 1+3, and 3+1, and even 5-1.

The simple truth is that there are just so many tickets

BM sold out last year, caused anxiousness, and set us up to want to put the odds in our favors

hence- Most people ordered multiple tickets

But 10,000 tickets are yet to be sold in March

4,000 low income tickets yet to be sold

Disqualified tickets from the main sale will be soon available... how many? Dunno yet.

STEP- with thousands of tickets yet to be determined coming available.

Be patient and resourceful.

[FlyingMonkey]

Instead of trying do do math with numbers that you cant possibly know why not look at what we can see. If I were scalping & had tickets I damn well would have them listed right now. From what I have seen there are 80+ on stubhub, none on eBay, and Im sure more on CL. Thats not a very high percentage folks!
Hell thetes still 10,000 tickets that have not even been offered for sale yet!
Please stop adding to everyones stress level by posting outrageous claime about soooo many tickets being in the hands of scalpers when you, in reality can't determine that quantity.

[jgailor]

[quote="KestrelSF"]A lot of people have pointed out, quite correctly, that the "math" is speculative at best and fuzzy as all hell. [/quote]

You shouldn't give in so quickly. Having a statistics background, if you can establish that ePlaya is a representative sample then it is definitely large enough to make statistical inferences.

[FlyingMonkey]

A lot of people have pointed out, quite correctly, that the "math" is speculative at best and fuzzy as all hell.

You shouldn't give in so quickly. Having a statistics background, if you can establish that ePlaya is a representative sample then it is definitely large enough to make statistical inferences.

Maybe we are hearing more from people that did not get tickets and not so much from those that did? I did, but quite honesty feel a little guilty now. At this point not too many people are going to flaunt their ticket when so many didn't get any. Just a thought and something hard to factor in to the equation.

[CapnJoe]

WOW! I dont know exactly how many in our camp didn't get tickets, at least 20 and counting, two of them are the wife and I. I had just purchased a truck to make into another MV for our camp, and now, CRAP! I don't have a ticket yet. Should I wait until this ticket FIASCO pans out, or what? The previous 4 years I had a ticket the first day! I'm getting REALLY TIRED of Bmorg lovers saying DON'T WORRY!!!!

[theCryptofishist]

1 eplaya is NOT a representitive sample.

2 Mad crush on the kernel

3 Mad crush on FlyingMonkey

[hotmess]

I'm getting REALLY TIRED of Bmorg lovers saying DON'T WORRY!!!!

I feel the exact same way. I entered into the lottery thinking all those that wanted tickets this early in the game would get them. Boy, was i wrong! Out of the 16 that were going to be in our camp this year only 6 got tickets. And 2 of those 6 were the early expensive pre sale.

But don't worry, the nearly 30,000 people who want tickets will get them in the open sale

[jgailor]

[quote="theCryptofishist"]1 eplaya is NOT a representitive sample.[/quote]

This is known because...?

[Dusty McShroomface]

I see I'll have to add more categories to the wheel!

.

Love your GIF's Kernul, but if you really want to perfect the wheel, make the dollar amounts $240, $320, $390, and $420 and change Bankruptcy to Fake Ticket.

Just a thought...

[lhorthy]

Large numbers of tickets have started showing up on scalper websites like :

Stubhub => 86 tickets in large blocks, 82 over $700, top price $1650.
VividSeats => 38 tickets in large blocks, 30 over $1000, top price $1720.
TicketsNow => 23 tickets over $1000, Many large blocks (8 or more)

Time for BMORG to void the lottery and redo with name on ticket to enter. They can cover the cost of this by using pdf print at home tickets instead of printing fancy counterfeit proof tix.

[AntiM]

1 eplaya is NOT a representitive sample.

This is known because...?

There are a mere 36,000 users registered on eplaya. Many are inactive accounts, and many are "dead" spammers who haven't been weeded out, some are sock accounts of one person, and many are one post wonders who forgot their password and never came back, many are wannebas who never have attended and never plan to do so. We have less than 3,000 active posters here. Far less. I could look it up and give you exact numbers, but I don't want to. You could look it up, it is no secret.

So yeah, less than 1% of Burning Man attendees ever post on eplaya. Statistically, that is not a representative sample. Who knows, there could be a whole world of happy burners out there with no reason to go online and complain.

[unjonharley]

Large numbers of tickets have started showing up on scalper websites like :

Stubhub => 86 tickets in large blocks, 82 over $700, top price $1650.
VividSeats => 38 tickets in large blocks, 30 over $1000, top price $1720.
TicketsNow => 23 tickets over $1000, Many large blocks (8 or more)

Time for BMORG to void the lottery and redo with name on ticket to enter. They can cover the cost of this by using pdf print at home tickets instead of printing fancy counterfeit proof tix.

If a bunch of nuts want to buy the above tickets.. I have a bridge for sale..

There are no tickets out there.. You would be buying hot air..

[chunts]

the most interesting factor of this that I've noticed so far, is that I've heard of literally nobody in my camp or our greater burner community that has these "extra" tickets, that are supposedly so plentiful and ready to be redistributed. in a group of a hundred or so at the low end, you'd think you'd start to see some averages play out. you'd see people get none and people who ended up with more than they need. instead what we are seeing is a 30-40% success rate with tickets, which (yes, anecdotally) seems to be a figure that's popping up on this board and in surveys a lot.

there are far too many variables to make any kind of useful calculation. we don't know how many people requested tickets. we don't know how many will show up on STEP. we don't know how many will show up from scalping sources. we probably have not heard as much from people who were awarded tickets than we have from people who were not.

BUT, I think the real fear here is not that scalpers have all the tickets or that people are hoarding them, but that *there just won't be enough tickets*. how that got to be such a significant issue in the span of one year is what everyone is hanging up on.

[NeophileB]

So yeah, less than 1% of Burning Man attendees ever post on eplaya. Statistically, that is not a representative sample.

With all due respect AntiM, the fact that it is a small sample does not preclude it from being a representative one. Not saying that the eplaya is a representative sample for these purposes, but I don't see any good reason to claim that it is not. Though I think there are other problems with the data and Crypto's main point is probably sound.

[Dusty McShroomface]

I'd believe a huge jump in interest as a part of the equation. There's a lot of factors, can't be just one thing.

So, in no particular order: normal increase in population, panic over the sell out, padding of ticket orders, scalping professional and amateur, bucket lists, economy improving, friends bringing friends, videos and documentaries, burners turning old enough to go, Facebook, YouTube, and good weather last year.

AntiM nailed it...

The number of people who "LIKE" Burning Man on Facebook is well over 300,000 and Teddy Saunders "Oh, the Places You'll Go at Burning Man!" video has almost 1.3 million hits. With that much exposure for such an amazing event, demand surely outstripped the 40,000 tickets available.

This will be my 4th Burn... first year I went was with a camp of 11 people in 2009. From that group of 11, 3 dropped out but our camp still swelled to 35 in 2010. In 2011, I joined an amazing 1st time registered Theme Camp and we had well over 100 burners from LA, Scotland, London, Dubai and France, many of them were Birgins. This year, we also had only about 20% success rate for our camp... but the pattern we see is that the capacity of BRC is not growing at the same rate as its popularity due to the BLM imposed population cap. Nearly everyone that goes to BM wants to return the next year and bring all their friends. Unfortunately, that is clearly not possible.

Hopefully everything will sort itself out.

[5280MeV]

1 eplaya is NOT a representitive sample.

This is known because...?

There are a mere 36,000 users registered on eplaya. Many are inactive accounts, and many are "dead" spammers who haven't been weeded out, some are sock accounts of one person, and many are one post wonders who forgot their password and never came back, many are wannebas who never have attended and never plan to do so. We have less than 3,000 active posters here. Far less. I could look it up and give you exact numbers, but I don't want to. You could look it up, it is no secret.

So yeah, less than 1% of Burning Man attendees ever post on eplaya. Statistically, that is not a representative sample. Who knows, there could be a whole world of happy burners out there with no reason to go online and complain.

I agree with your conclusion but not with your reasoning. (The rest of your posts over the last few days have been awesome, though.)

A sample that is a tiny fraction of a population can be very representative, and yield statistically significant results if it is large. n=3,000 is plenty large, even as a sample of the total population of the United States. In fact, surveys of the presidential approval rating typically only sample 1000 or so people. The total number of people sampled must be fairly big, but it does not matter how small a percentage of the population it is - this is the power of statistical inference.

The problem can come if your sample does not select people truly randomly. For example, a presidential approval poll might conduct a survey by calling people on home telephone numbers. This could leave out people who use only cell phones, which is a younger population. For the sake of argument, lets say that younger people overwhelmingly approve of the president. Then by leaving out cell phone users, you skew your results negatively as you have left out a major segment of the population that supports the president strongly. The problem is that cell phone use correlates with being young, and being young (in this example) correlates with supporting the president.

So a sample of a few hundred people on the message board is ok, as long as the people using the message board today are not more or less likely to have received a ticket. It is completely reasonable to suppose that people who did not get a ticket are currently more active online, as they are worried about what they are going to do. So there is a likely correlation between not getting a ticket and using the message board.

Furthermore, this poll suffers from being a voluntary response poll. No one is calling random burners, the poll is only sampling from burners who feel strongly enough to bother participating. This can create an enormous bias, and so voluntary response polls are almost always considered scientifically invalid.

Beyond sampling inaccuracies, there is another problem with the design of this poll. One absolutely must differentiate between the tiers that people signed up for. A person who signed up for all tiers had a much better chance than someone who signed up only for the lowest tier. We don't know if there are lots of entries at all tiers, or a glut of tier-1 entries. A separate, unbiased, and well designed poll would be required to obtain this information first.

Unless you can figure out a way to create an unbiased random sample of burners, it is impossible to infer the ticket statistics without the actual ticket data.

[Lord Of Ruin]

Instead of trying do do math with numbers that you cant possibly know why not look at what we can see. If I were scalping & had tickets I damn well would have them listed right now. From what I have seen there are 80+ on stubhub, none on eBay, and Im sure more on CL. Thats not a very high percentage folks!
Hell thetes still 10,000 tickets that have not even been offered for sale yet!
Please stop adding to everyones stress level by posting outrageous claime about soooo many tickets being in the hands of scalpers when you, in reality can't determine that quantity.

Umm, if you had them and were a scalper that listed now, you would be a bad scalper that doesn't understand the business. I think you meant to say "If I was a scalper that had a ticket, I'd list it now because that would be easier for burners to count me and predict my behavior."

In reality, it's in a scalper's best interest to wait out STEP, and wait out the final back of Open tix. THEN if demand still exceeds supply, they can jack rates and make a huge profit. If there is NOT demand (i.e. tix are still available from the Open sale), the scalper then poses like meek little burner and goes on Eplaya saying "I can't go..please by my face value ticket instead of one from the Org!" Some burner will oblige, wanting to help out a community member being stuck with an unused ticket. So the community helped cause the scalping problem, and they're actually insuring the scalpers from having losses.

So unlike a concert, BM tix now have become a gamble that has enormous upside potential and almost no downside potential for speculators.

[mufasa]

This is my second post here, and I have never been to burning man. I only know of one other person who put in for BM tickets and we both got them, we are also both virgins. Cannot wait to meet you fine people.

[Galaxo Magic]

WOW! I dont know exactly how many in our camp didn't get tickets, at least 20 and counting, two of them are the wife and I. I had just purchased a truck to make into another MV for our camp, and now, CRAP! I don't have a ticket yet. Should I wait until this ticket FIASCO pans out, or what? The previous 4 years I had a ticket the first day! I'm getting REALLY TIRED of Bmorg lovers saying DON'T WORRY!!!!

I hear ya brother!

[vargaso]

Agree with you on the validity of a statistical sampling from eplaya users, I think the examples shared here on percentage of people getting tickets will turn out to be quite accurate throughout the BM population.

Another thing I'm putting a lot of weight on is that pretty much every concern/fear about the lottery that has been raised here over the past few months has come to fruition. The latest trend, after reading post after post of camps getting not more than 30%-40% ticket success, seemingly no one with "extra" tickets, and the very meager showing on scalping sites, is that demand really is that high and that there simply will not be many tickets available after the sale in March. I think this will be shown to be true, unfortunately.

I'm stil hopeful, though.

[KestrelSF]

And not to beat a dead horse here (too late!) I've been getting consistent information from various sources - mostly folks that are camp leaders for other camps. I'd agree that you have to take everything you hear on eplaya with a huge grain of salt. If it was just stuff I'd read here I wouldn't consider it reliable. But I'm hearing the same thing from a good number of camps and art projects. I don't think people are getting how devastating the delay in knowing if you have tickets available for your key people. It's fine to say wait and see if you are planning on being mostly a spectator but when you are drawing up camp plans it makes things REALLY difficult. Right now I'm looking at about 20% of my camp having tickets. But hey, I agree with folks that the chaos is just part of burning man. Maybe things will suck so bad this year with plans and theme camps and art projects torn asunder that the folks that buy tickets in June from scalpers will never want to come back and next year things won't be as bad.

[Timezone LaFontaine]

I see I'll have to add more categories to the wheel!

.

*clawing at the screen* Dangit, how do you spin this fucking thing?!....

[The Bruce]

out of the 16 members of my camp only 3 people were awarded a total of 4 tickets

[matt_freedman]

For my theme camp, 11 people won tickets in the lottery, 16 were denied and the rest haven't yet reported. Those who didn't get tickets include myself (a key organizer) and many of the core elders who really make the camp happen every year. It's not clear whether our camp (Salon Soleil -- founded in 2004) will happen in 2012 absent a major shift in ticket availability. None of us are motivated to start planning without clarity on whether our core people have tickets. We're all in a state of collective shock.

It's really our fault -- we listened to the BMORG when they told us to only submit for the number of tickets we needed. We should have known that good actors would be punished and bad actors would be rewarded. Had we properly understood the system, we would have all submitted multiple lottery entries in order to compete with the scalpers and ensure that our camp had enough tickets. Unless the system changes, we'll do what everyone else will do -- submit hundreds of entries, play the percentages, and hope for enough tickets to cover our entire group.

The ticket system needs to be reformed. I agree with those who propose a system where tickets are coded to specific names in a database and cannot be resold. Those who buy tickets but need to bail should be allowed to cancel (up until early August), have their money refunded, and the ticket should be resold through BMORG. Every ticket should be held at will-call with entrants providing IDs at the gate and checked against the master list. I've selected will-call tickets for many years and never had a problem at the gate.

Without this type of change, BM will be increasingly dominated by the following:

(1) VIP package tourists who arrive with wheeled suitcases, inhabit pre-made camps and are served by paid staff

(2) Europeans in RVs who are attracted by the idea of a giant rave and participate by giving out a few cans of beer to strangers

(3) Virgins who arrive ready to consume, but not necessarily prepared to contribute

Perhaps 2012 marks the end of an era. If so, I will be very sad. But life goes on.

[FlyingMonkey]

Instead of trying do do math with numbers that you cant possibly know why not look at what we can see. If I were scalping & had tickets I damn well would have them listed right now. From what I have seen there are 80+ on stubhub, none on eBay, and Im sure more on CL. Thats not a very high percentage folks!
Hell thetes still 10,000 tickets that have not even been offered for sale yet!
Please stop adding to everyones stress level by posting outrageous claime about soooo many tickets being in the hands of scalpers when you, in reality can't determine that quantity.

Umm, if you had them and were a scalper that listed now, you would be a bad scalper that doesn't understand the business. I think you meant to say "If I was a scalper that had a ticket, I'd list it now because that would be easier for burners to count me and predict my behavior."

In reality, it's in a scalper's best interest to wait out STEP, and wait out the final back of Open tix. THEN if demand still exceeds supply, they can jack rates and make a huge profit. If there is NOT demand (i.e. tix are still available from the Open sale), the scalper then poses like meek little burner and goes on Eplaya saying "I can't go..please by my face value ticket instead of one from the Org!" Some burner will oblige, wanting to help out a community member being stuck with an unused ticket. So the community helped cause the scalping problem, and they're actually insuring the scalpers from having losses.

So unlike a concert, BM tix now have become a gamble that has enormous upside potential and almost no downside potential for speculators.

I respectfully disagree. No one, including the scalpers, know what the demand will be after STEP & the 10,000 tickets that will be sold in March. After all, we have yet to see almost 1/5th of the tickets available go on sale. Yes, more people want to attend than there are tickets, but not everyone can afford the luxury of spending $500-$1000 for a ticket either. And that is exactly what it is. A self indulgent luxury. There is a limit to what scalpers can ask. Everyone has their price range but I would have a hard time supporting a scalper & encouraging their behavior anyway. I have been wanting to go for several years but I have had other things occupying my summers other than Burning Man. I would be very disappointed if I didn't get a ticket this year but I am involved with my regional and will still have a great time attending events leading up to the Burn. I would like to go every year but I am realistic & know that probably wont happen. I will appreciate the times I can go, be disappointed when I can't, and always make plans for the next year regardless. Maybe this will be a blessing in disguise & people will start participating in their regional groups more & they will grow & have more wonderful events in the shadow of the Man.

[Steel Kitty]

Trilobyte wrote:

"What I've seen a lot of, through anecdotal posts on the boards and on Facebook is that there are an unprecedented number of brand new burners planning to come to Black Rock City. Lots and lots and lots of first timers. Not the vast majority or anything, but more than I've ever seen in previous years - that's going to be a fun and interesting dynamic. That said, I hope that those still seeking tickets have success either through their network of friends, through the ticket exchange, or through the open sale in March."

So, I have a reply. (of course) Lots and Lots of first timers went last year too. Unprecedented trash left everywhere. Lots of Yellow bikes, locked up and decorated. And as a greeter, more than half of them didn't know (or care) about MOOP, gifting, or the culture of BM. Mostly about MOOP, and porta's. "whaddaya mean there's no trash cans, that's what we paid $400 for a ticket for. You mean we have to pack it out??" And true to form, those same virgins did NOT pack it out, and left me and my girl to pick up nearly 11 full bags of rotting food and trash, that they left conveniently near our camp (and really, I didn't want my camp placement to show up red in the MOOP map)

You only have to look at a few other festivals that have grown exponentially to figure out what 2012 will look like. Did you see the main field at Lightening in a Bottle last year. TRASH. EVERYWHERE. Coachella? TRASH. EVERYWHERE. DecomLA? TRASH.

In fact, I have a prediction for 2012. It will be the year of TRASH. Mark my words.

[FlyingMonkey]

After the Zombie Apocalypse in December no one will know the difference anyway.

[vangran]

I agree with kestralsf that there are enough reports regarding percentages for the large camps to see the trends of something like 30%. These are not just individuals reporting that they did/did not get tickets. These are eplayans reporting on larger samples that they have knowledge of(ie their own circle of friends and camp mates). What's more all of these samples are reporting very consistent results( 30-40%).
Also, while there may only be 3,000 active eplayans, and while these posts may be from only a few of them, they are reporting on the experience of very nearly a thousand or so of their friends which is a pretty large statistical sample when we are talking about 40,000 tickets.
However, that does not mean that all of the other tKickets went to scalpers(although I am sure quite a few did). I agree with Trilobyte when he said that there seems to be a larger than usual crop of virgins this year on the boards.
I can imagine quite a few reasons for this. 1) as SimonOTP mentioned in another thread, most of us have told anyone who would listen all about this fantastic thing we know as Burning Man and how they really have to go. 2) the "places you will go" video is one of the best short videos in a while ( Madison Avenue would be hard pressed to come up with a better infomercial). 3) I didn't hear about the lottery process from JRS, or here on Eplaya. I saw it first in my LOCAL NEWSPAPER. If it was in my little small town NP I'm sure it was in most of them across the country. Add these things to the fact that BM sold out last year and you have a perfect storm of demand for tickets to see what one of the best kept( not so much) secrets, and one of the greatest ideas of the twentieth century (thank you Larry) was all about.
It's interesting too, to look at this in the context of this year's theme "Fertility 2.0". Burning Man has grown to a point where,Iike many organisms or ideas It reaches critical mass and explodes in a giant orgasm into progeny that is bigger, stronger and sometimes even better than the parent.
It is very difficult in this time when so many orphans have been created, to see much if anything positive, but I do hold out hope for our family's future. I have hope that the newbies will add to the burn as they always have and that the principles and sense of community will spread far beyond the borders of BRC. Regionals will continue to provide a home away from home for all that need one.
Also I expect a few more Orphan Burns than usual this year.

[Handy]

I don't agree with the scalper speculations at all. However, based on the aggregate numbers among the Burners I am in contact with (around 150), there is no way that only 68,000 ticket requests were made.

1) If this were true, that would mean that this particular group of Burners are, collectively, the unluckiest Burners in the world... by far. We have now accounted for 11 tickets secured among around 150 tickets requested. Math? Roughly 7%.
2) To say that only 68,000 tickets were requested would mean that only 40,000 people entered the lottery, unless I'm missing something.

If one were to draw a conclusion from the real findings I referenced above, the number of tickets requests would be more in the neighborhood of 571428.57 but hey, who's counting right? Is it really so difficult to believe that with all the happy blabbering we all do when we come home from the Playa on "cloud 9" that we don't create a ten-fold interest in attending an event that is only allowed to grow a few percent every year, per BLM guidelines?

[JStep]

http://www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision/2012/02/02/burning-man-ticket-fiasco-creates-uncertain-future

30% seems to be the general consensus. Moving on...