Tickets for the largest ever Glastonbury festival went on sale at 9.00 am on Sunday morning and sold out in less than two hours. The 137,500 tickets, the largest number ever made available for the event, were snapped up in just 1hour and 45 minutes - almost halving the 3 hours taken to sell tickets in 2005. The tickets were sold using the ticketing system developed by Huddersfield-based Majestic Interactive for See Tickets, the exclusive distributor of festival tickets for 2007.

137,500 tickets, the largest number ever made available for the event, were snapped up in just 1hour and 45 minutes Glastonbury is the largest green field music and performing arts festival in the world. The three-day event, set against the backdrop of unspoilt rural England, has run annually since 1970 and attracts some of the biggest bands in popular music. It is the single biggest online ticket event in the UK and this year will feature artists including The Arctic monkeys, The Who and Shirley Bassey – though the full line-up will not be confirmed until June.

The ticket sale for 2007 differed from events in previous years as fans were now required to pre-register their details and receive a unique registration ID used to gain access to the ticket ordering pages on the See website. The registration system, also developed by Majestic, was introduced in an effort to reduce the number of tickets bought by touts and also required users to submit a passport sized photograph which will be printed on their ticket.

single biggest online ticket event in the UK Unique traffic management measures were implemented during the sale itself to ensure the site would be able to cope with the 400,000 registered users attempting to purchase the limited number of tickets. This ensured that the maximum number of simultaneous users were able to buy tickets at any one time without causing the website to crash.

Unique traffic management measures were implemented during the sale itself Both the ticket sale and the registration process have received extremely positive feedback from festival organisers and from fans on numerous Glastonbury forums. Commenting on the registration process, Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis said “Its a great system. It’s the first time it’s ever been done - it’s just gone so well it’s just unbelievable. The system has worked really, really well and it’s a first.” Anti tout measures certainly appear to have been a big success - with no tickets appearing for sale at inflated prices on auction sites such as eBay, ensuring this years tickets go to genuine festival goers.

“We are delighted with the results of yesterdays sale” says Julien Balmforth, Managing Director of Majestic Interactive. “Selling such a large volume of tickets in such a short space of time is a fantastic achievement for See and Majestic and is testament to the close and successful working relationship enjoyed by the two companies. The positive feedback received about the system from the ticket-buying fans themselves has also been a massive plus and confirms the efforts made to make the ticket buying process as fair and straightforward as possible”.