Glastonbury Returns Sold Out In Minutes: Kanye West Choice Justified?
Music fans will be well aware that Glastonbury tickets sold out in just 25 minutes when they went on sale in the autumn of 2014. All 135,000 tickets for the world famous music festival sold out in record time six months before a single act was confirmed. There was something of a furor last month when Glastonbury festival curator Emily Eavis announced on Twitter that Kanye West would headline the prestigious Saturday night slot at the sold-out festival.
We are thrilled to let you know we have the one and only Kanye West headlining Saturday night on the Pyramid stage!
— Emily Eavis (@emilyeavis) March 16, 2015
The choice of West to headline the sold-out festival proved to a controversial one, as music fans set up a petition that attracted over 130,000 signatures, demanding that West be dropped from the line-up. Emily Eavis took the unprecedented step of writing a piece in the Guardian defending the choice of West as a headliner.
Eavis said, “[W]e think the story this year should not be, ‘Why is Kanye coming?’ but, ‘How amazing is it that Kanye is coming’?”
“One of the world’s biggest superstars and a music legend, always interesting, never boring. He has agreed to play a festival where headliners get paid a fraction of their normal rate in support of Oxfam, Water Aid and Greenpeace as well as thousands of other worthy causes. We think that’s pretty great.”
Even then, people like Noel Gallagher claimed that Glastonbury had sold out by booking West.
Today it seems that Emily Eavis has been proved right and the Kanye haters have been proved wrong. Glastonbury is unique amongst music festivals in that when tickets go on sale, you can only pay a deposit. When the line-up announcement is announced, you have the option to cancel your ticket and get your deposit back. Music fans who missed out when the festival sold out in the autumn then get the opportunity to snap up any returns.
The Independent reports that returned tickets went on sale this morning at 9 a.m. Just 11 minutes later, Emily Eavis took to Twitter to announce that resale tickets had sold out in record time.
All the resale tickets have gone in 11 minutes, that's our fastest ever resale time! Thanks to everyone and sorry to those who missed out.
— Emily Eavis (@emilyeavis) April 19, 2015
Metro reports that Glastonbury festival would not say how many tickets were in the resale, but they were sold out in double quick time. Disappointed fans will now have to accept that they will be unable to attend the sold-out festival this year.
NME reports that 75 acts were named this week for the festival. Joining the already confirmed headliners Foo Fighters and Kanye West, Florence + The Machine, Jamie T, Alt-J, Patti Smith, Super Furry Animals, Jungle, The Chemical Brothers, Suede, The Vaccines, and The Maccabees are some of the acts to win a slot at this year’s sold-out festival.
According to Emily Eavis, the remaining headliner and the acts who will grace the 60-plus Glastonbury stages will be announced in the next few weeks.
[Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images]
