How to Get Tickets to Burning Man and LA’s Regional Burn + How to Report Scalpers
Carnical of Mirrors is this year’s Burning Man theme; image from the Burning Man Website
Did you get skunked getting Burning Man tickets this year?
You are not alone!
If you were a key member of a theme camp (and there are 20,000 of us!), you were eligible to get tickets in the Directed Group Sales…until those 20,000 tickets sold out in a few hours on Weds. February 11. (Yes that’s how we got ours!)
As explained here, in order to be eligible to buy tickets in the main sale, you had to preregister by creating or updating your Burner by Valentine’s Day. Some 80,000 people did. And then on Weds. February 18, at noon, most of those 80,000 people tried to buy 2 tickets and a carpass. That’s 160,000 tickets desired and not that many for sale (reportedly 40,000). Thousands of tickets were gobbled up within seconds–even though it took a good two hours or so to process it all while people hopefully kept waiting in line.
Burners being Burners, back doors to the system were discovered and exploited. Heads may roll, tickets may be lost. Read all about it here: Lie, Cheat, and Steal Your Way To Burning Man.
What’s a Burner to do?
For starters, DO NOT BUY scalped tickets.
Instead wait for the STEP program where Burners can sell their tickets at cost to other Burners, or wait for the OMG sale.
And most importantly, report scalpers or anyone who is trying to sell a ticket for more than they paid! (Do you have any idea how high people are asking? Up to 1 Million! It’s insane!)
According to LA Regional Director Athena Demos this is what you should do if you find:
1. Marked up tickets on eBay? Report ’em! Instructions https://ticketsupport.burningman.com/customer/portal/articles/1468265-what-can-i-do-about-a-marked-up-listing-on-ebay–
2. Marked up tickets on StubHub? Report ’em! I got these instructions straight from their customer service department today: -Send an email directly to yourfeedbackmatters@stubhub.com containing the name of the event (2015 Burning Man Festival and 2015 Burning Man Festival Vehicle Pass), the dates of the event, and if you want to get super detailed you can also list exact URLs for each ticket you want to report (that’s for folks who have a lot of time to put toward this since there are currently over 400 tickets on there). IMPORTANT: Include your contact number so they can reach you if they have further questions – *everyone* needs to do this, because they’re far more likely to take the complaint seriously if they can actually reach someone to respond. They want to help, so please try not to yell abuse at the StubHub folks – they’re not the ones who listed the tickets, guys. Be nice and they’re a lot more likely to help (that’s true of eBay, too).
3. Marked up tickets on Craigslist? Oh, there’s all kinds of options here… I personally recommend NOT BUYING THEM at the higher listed price (you know who you are out there, stop encouraging the behavior!) and perhaps nicely reaching out and offering to pay face value plus ticket fees: I’ve seen many CL transactions go that way, and it’s really better for everyone than getting hostile from the jump. If that doesn’t work, flag the hell out of the post and it’ll come down… do it often enough and maybe the seller will be more willing to listen to reasonable offers. SIDE NOTE: I see that there are already people posting onLA’s CL offering upward of $1200 for tickets – stop that! You are part of the problem, my friend, and it is not appreciated by anyone. Let’s try to work together toward a solution.
For marked up tickets posted anywhere that actually show identifying info?
If you come across a posting that has some identifiable information about the seller, their name, order confirmation number, or (once physical tickets are in the world) a ticket number or QR code, email us ticketsupport@burningman.com and let us know so we can research and pursue it. Without that our only recourse is just to report items just like anyone else.
If you are buying third party tickets here is important information for you to avoid fraud.
And if this whole ticket thing is just too much of a hassle, OR if your response is that someone should do another Burning Man, consider joining a regional group and attending a regional Burn.
General tickets for the LA Regional Burn, BEquinox, go on sale TOMORROW Saturday Feb 28 at 10am for an event which takes place in the desert near Joshua Tree over the Spring Equinox (that’s March 19-22). Tickets are $100 per person; admission is free for kids 13 and under.
Only 1000 total tickets will be sold, and like at Burning Man, these are what’s left after the Directed Group Sales for key personnel at theme camps and other volunteers.
The link to General Ticket sales is:
https://lala.webconnex.com/imagine
If there are tickets still available (very unlikely!) an OMG sale will open on Monday March 9th at 8am PST and close on Wednesday March 11th at 8pm PST.
For more information: http://laburningman.com/bequinox
While I’ve never been (it’s during Little League baseball season) I’ve heard it’s like how Burning Man used to be back when there were 1000 or so people and just about everyone was solidly participating. There’s theme camps, there’s art, there’s music and there’s stuff getting burned.
Hope to see you there!
PS Subscribe! Upper right corner!
art predator 
i used to agree with your thought process on the resale of tickets…..until…
Turn key camps. These camps buy and then resale tickets along with a so called experience for big mark ups….as a matter of fact…that’s how some of them make their living.. So when it comes to someone resaling their ticket ….I say let them….if Someone is willing to pay the asking price for the experience of Burningman then I say pay the price and if they don’t …then sit at home….I’ve been involved with a camp for 5 years and truly believe in giving to the community but do not expect more from the community than Bmorg is willing to give by supporting turn key camps.
Greg, thanks for stopping by and ocmmenting. I really understand where you are coming from. And it’s a fine line, a debatable line, but in my book there is a difference between some one doing their homework and figuring out the logisitcs and getting some tickets and selling them–especially when it was tiered sales. But I don’t feel the same about StubHub and Ebay–about people buying and marking up tickets for sale to the community.