Shambhala hits another home run: unprecedented number of ticket sales
Tickets for the 15th annual Shambhala Music Festival, Aug. 8-13 2012, went on sale on Friday, Oct. 21 with an unprecedented number of ticket sales.
The 7 pm release was delayed by half an hour when the site crashed due to the high volume of people visiting the site.
The Shambhala tech team replaced the website with a simple ticket ordering webpage which allowed customers to place orders by 7:30 pm.
Similar to the 2011 ticket release, the 1,000 ‘extra early bird’ tickets sold out in just a couple of minutes, but what happened next surprised even Shambhala organizers.
“We expected an increase in sales, but nothing like this,” said ticket administrator, Sara Victor. “Last year, in the first 24 hours, we’d sold 1500 tickets. We were guessing we’d do somewhere around 2200 this year. As it turns out, we sold 4200 tickets in the first 24 hours of 2012 ticket sales.”
This puts the festival’s ticket sales on par with where they were in January of last year.
The trend of tickets selling out well in advance was evident in festivals celebrating electronic music during the 2011 festival season and 2012 is already set to be another record setting year for electronic music festivals.
Shambhala organizers expect to be sold out before the New Year.
“Our fan base trusts us,” said Corrine Zawaduk, production manager for SMF. “It is several months before we even announce our talent line up and already tickets are selling faster than ever. We offer a world class festival and the word is out,” she said with a smile.
There were 2,400 tickets of just over 5,000 remaining taken offline this week for allocation at ticket stores and for ShambhaLodging packages. Tickets will be available in stores before Christmas.
To order tickets online (while they last), visit www.shambhalamusicfestival.com.
