Get ready for Ticket Sales… like NOW!

If you have done nothing yet, there are 2 things you must stop and do immediately. Because if you wait you are screwed. So you need to:

These two things are what you need to buy Burning Man tickets. If you have not read, IN DETAIL, tickets.burningman.com you could suffer some pain through this process.

When is this happening?

We copied all the important dates we could find from the Burning Man site on this page [click me]. There is even more detail on the Burning Man Tickets link above as well. But heed these dates as they are carved in stone and need to be thought of as if they were in two tablets from a burning bush… pun intended.

But that is not all!

On that page of important dates is also shows that the applications for Theme Camp placement, Mutant Vehicles and other things are also opening up. We hear there is no advantage to filling them out early or late, but one would imagine that the sooner the better is a win in our column and theirs.

The people reviewing those applications need to review them, might have to ask questions about them, then go through a series of processes to complete them. We have a responsibility to make sure they are thorough and complete as well.

Conclusion

Here are some cool articles from other sites that relate to this topic:

Google Search: How to get ready for Burning Man ticket sales.

2014 TTITD Ticket Sales

According to the JRS (Jack Rabbit Speaks) ticket sales are starting soon. They will virtually be the same as last year except they will come through a different provider. YOU MUST HAVE REGISTERED A BURNER PROFILE in order to participate with this sale… period.

  • PreSale : 3,000 Tickets :  $650./ea : Weds. 1/22 12pm PST
  • Group Sale : 15,000 Tickets : $380./ea : Weds. 2/12 12pm PST
  • Individual Sale : 38,000 Tickets : $380./ea : Weds 2/26 12pm PST
  • Last Chance : 1,000 Tickets : $380./ea : Thu 7/31 12pm PST

STEP: where you can buy and sell previously purchased tickets safely dates have not yet been set.

Property of Burning Man
Property of Burning Man

It is the Secure Ticket Exchange Program which is Burning Man’s answer to the scum out there that tries profiting off these tickets and selling fakes.

Low Income Tickets

These tickets must be purchased via an application that shows a need for this special pricing. The dates have yet to be announced.

  • Low Income : 4,000 Tickets : $190./ea

Plan on driving?

YOU MUST be aware that there is a big change this year! In order to drive into Black Rock City you will need a $40./ea car pass. You can add this when you purchase your ticket.

Ticket Delivery

With the exception of Low Income Tickets, all tickets purchased will be delivered in June. LI tickets are picked up via Will Call and paid for by cash at the gate.

NOTE: All this information is extrapolated from the January 8th, 2014 edition of the JRS. All additional details can be found by reading the post.This is a link to the archive: Click Here. It is highly recommended you get this newsletter by clicking here.

*TTITD: That Thing In The Desert

2014 Tickets: a la Burning Man

Let’s be honest, you better start preparing for your upcoming ticket purchase for Burning Man 2014: __ (unnamed entity) ___. The last few years has been absolutely hell with ticket purchasing. Here are a few heads up, a couple gripes, and a hint or two about making it easier to get your tickets.

  • 2011 ticketing sales were pretty much an attempt to keep people from bitching about the on-line purchase system that was cumbersome and made you wait in an online cue for a long time; sometimes loosing your place and being bounced out.
  • 2012 was the year Burning Man lost their damn minds and put in the lottery system that ended up pissing off enough of their core people that the whole paradigm of Burning Man was forced to change.
  1. to their credit they bounced back in the end quite well
  2. to their discredit, the movie SPARK unnecessarily labored the ticket issue
  • 2013 BMorg said… well, fuck you again, and sold almost all their tickets at the higher tier price of $380. with some set aside for low income.

Ticket Sales for 2014

Of course BMorg (Burning Man, LLC or The Burning Man Project or whatever they are calling themselves now) has not announced ticket sales for 2014 yet but you can pretty much bet a few things will happen and you need to start stashing some cash under your mattress now.

  1. Holiday Sales will be at least 25% higher that the highest starting somewhere in the middle of December-ish for about $650./each
  2. 2014 Sales will start around/about January 16th
  3. 2014 Low Income Tickets will start at some point, BUT!!! If you register to buy full priced tickets you will get screwed out of low income.

2014

I think a lot of people would prefer we went back to the old system at this point and maybe people would find less reasons to bitch and kvetch. If that is the price it takes to get tickets and get them with less bullshit attached then please let’s serve it up. Unfortunately that ship has likely sailed and the Burning Man image has shifted along with it to a slow crawl to being a Coachella.

Let’s also hope ticket prices are less like a fisting and more like a happy-ending. Ticket pricing in 2012 and 2013 were just wrong and are only affordable to those who the privileged class. The same people who show up with their plug n’ play camps and roll in with their moving apartments while many of us barely have tents.

We all know that Burning Man was being raped themselves last year with Pershing County trying to gouge the hell out of the organization. Not to mention, we forget sometimes, how many people have their greasy palms out looking for more grease.

2013 Ticket Sales Applied to 2014*

A flat rate of $380. plus handling fees is a lot for some of us and nothing to others. Imagine if that were to go up. Also, educate yourself with the Burning Man Afterburn Reports where they usually divulge the overall cost of running the big show.

There were AT LEAST 69,000 people at the Burn this year excluding some staff.

Say they sold 64,000 tickets at $380.00 each: $24,320,000
Say they sold about 5,000 Low Income tickets at $190.00 each: $950,000
$25,270,000

A full .08% of tickets were made available to low income ticket people. This is excluding tickets gifted to artists, staff and other performers of this, that or another.

It is in all likelihood that Burning Man oversold the event once again. So we can expect to see dents in these numbers anyway… *AND it should be clear that none of these number above are official and are rough; just to show the displaced nature of tickets for high income people versus low income.

The Secret

There is no secret. Many of us need Burning Man to remember that while their incomes are soaring through the roof that many of us that love this community are simply not as flushed with cash. Hopefully the voice of the community will be heard in this case.

  1. Save your pennies now! Create a piggy bank and put some cash in it from each of your paychecks.
  2. Get involved with your regional community because there is a lot of good people, resources and sometimes a budget that will help “do’ers” get there on a more affordable course

Tickets! Christmas Tickets!

You knew it was coming but did you know it was going to be $650.00? That’s right! Higher price for the benefit of having that tickie in your hand. The upside, the money goes to The Burning Man Project… yeah.

From the JRS:

Early-birds can participate in our Holiday Sale, which allows folks to buy tickets in time for holiday gifting. PLEASE NOTE: Holiday Sale tickets are priced dramatically higher than our regular tickets will be and Black Rock City, LLC will donate 3% of the price of each ticket sold during this early Holiday Sale to the Burning Man Project, a new nonprofit dedicated to spreading Burning Man culture around the world. (In addition, Black Rock City, LLC makes other substantial contributions throughout the year to support the Burning Man Project, including contributing the proceeds from fundraising events and many other forms of support.)

So ... here are the details:

- 3000 tickets will be offered at $650 each for the Holiday Sale.
- In order to participate in this sale, you must pre-register at:
http://tickets.burningman.com/registration-holiday2013.html
- Registration is open NOW and will close at noon PST on Wednesday December 19th.
- Those pre-registered will be able to participate in the first-come first-served sale on Thursday December 20th, starting at noon PST.
- You may purchase a maximum of 4 tickets per person.
- These tickets are not eligible for STEP, but are transferable (you are welcome to resell them on your own, if you wish).
- The only payment types accepted are Mastercard or Visa credit cards, or debit cards with either the Visa or Mastercard symbols. If you don't have one of these cards, you will need to obtain a one-time use card.
- Physical tickets will be shipped between June 1 and July 15, unless you opt for pick-up at Will Call in Black Rock City.

(We will not be implementing identity-based ticketing (e.g. name-on-ticket) ... for more information, see this blog post from Larry Harvey: http://blog.burningman.com/?p=23887.)

As always, you can find find full ticket information on http://tickets.burningman.com, and answers to your questions in our Ticketing FAQ (http://tickets2.burningman.com/faq.php) and spiffy new online ticketing forum (http://ticketsupport.burningman.com/home).