Massive UK Festival Forces Attendees To Smile For The Camera

noah | January 24, 2007 5:21 am
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The UK’s huger-than-life Glastonbury Festival–which just announced that the Arctic Monkeys and Bjork will be on the bill–is trying to crack down on scalping by using a pre-registration process for tickets and requiring attendees to submit a photo for identification purposes. From the festival’s official site:

As part of Glastonbury Festivals continuing campaign to combat touting, pre sales registration is being introduced this year. Everyone wanting to buy a ticket for the 2007 Festival will first have to register. This will mean supplying your contact details and a passport standard photo. Each ticket sold will feature the photograph of the person in whose name it is registered and will be non-exchangeable.

Registration will take place during February, with tickets going on sale April 1. While we’re certainly not on the side of the touts–who, last year, marked the price of a Glastonbury ticket up by almost 550%–we’re a bit skeptical about the photo-ID plan. Unless the festival’s organizers beef up security to airport levels, we suspect a few “artsy” scalper-provided pictures will slip through. What, you’ve never seen a fake ID fool someone working the door at a rock show?

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