Morning:
13°c
Websites are jammed as tickets for Reading Festival sell in minutes
Ellen Widdup31.03.09
ALL tickets for this year's Reading and Leeds festivals were sold "within minutes".
Phone lines were jammed, the joint festival website crashed and retail vendor HMV reported customers were queuing "around several blocks" across the country.
This year's headline performers will be Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead and the Kings of Leon.
Weekend passes priced at £175 for the August Bank Holiday gig went on sale at 7pm yesterday.
Last year 200,000 tickets for the events at Reading and Leeds sold out in just two hours in shops, over the telephone and online.
But a spokesman for HMV said that this year's had sold out in record time. "We are now at full capacity," he said. "All tickets went within minutes. I've never seen anything like it. All vendors have sold out. HMV saw twice as many customers than it had tickets."
The Kaiser Chiefs, Fall Out Boy, Placebo, Funeral for a Friend, Maximo Park, Bloc Party, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Gossip and Glasvegas will also be performing at Richfield Avenue in Reading and Bramham Park, Leeds.
A Reading council spokeswoman said that there was an increased demand for tickets this year because none would be sold on the door.
She added: "Following discussions between Festival Republic and Reading Borough Council, it has now been agreed that no tickets will be sold on the door at future events."
Last year The Killers, Metallica and Rage Against the Machine wowed crowds at the events, which are held over three days.
Organisers Festival Republic today promised more big name acts would be confirmed in coming weeks.
The Reading Festival started back in the summer of 1961, under the guise of the National Jazz Festival.
Melvyn Benn, from music festival promoter Mean Fiddler, said artists clamoured to play on the main stage at events such as Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds.
Reader views (5)
To respond to the last comment: we weren't aware of the cost prior to ringing the ticketline - naive perhaps, but we are new to this. My son and his 3 friends were simultaneously ringing the ticketline using mobile phones whilst two parents were trying to get through on the landline and internet, standing by with a credit card in case anyone got through. None of them did, and by my reckoning the ticketing agencies made a killing despite not selling them any tickets.
- Skint Parent, Brightlingsea, Essex
Erm, I'm a wee bit confused here. If you're unhappy with the cost of the phone line, and you evidently have an internet connection (otherwise you wouldn't be posting here), you could have bought tickets online. They were also being sold in HMV shops. The 'busy' message on the website when trying to buy tickets is the same for any big ticket sale, you just have to keep pressing that 'refresh' button.
Aside from anything else, 0871 / 0844 numbers are 10p/min and 5p/min on BT. Not exactly premium. Enjoy the festival, and be glad that you've got tickets!
- Mark Lee, Vauxhall
I didn't get my tickets till half 8... I was also kept on hold by the premium rate ticket lines then cut off. Such a con.
- Sim, ldn
"All tickets went within minutes" ? Not on this planet mate - the tickets definitely weren't sold out as I didn't manage to get mine until just before 9pm!
- Festylover, London
If the tickets were sold out "within minutes" why were the ticket lines still taking calls (and putting you on hold for 5 minutes before cutting you off) until at least 11pm last night (four hours after phone lines opened)? These are premium rate lines, and my son was charged £22 for this (unsuccessful) exercise. I know we weren't the only ones to fall for this. How difficult would it have been to put a sold-out sign up on the website (which hadn't crashed, and was displaying a 'busy' message), or to cut off the phone lines?
- Skint Parent, Brightlingsea, Essex
