Glastonbury’s Secondary Sellout

The resale of returned and canceled tickets for this year’s Glastonbury Festival sold out in 45 minutes April 17.

The June 22-26 festival’s tickets first went on sale Oct. 3, with all 140,000 snapped up in a little more than four hours. Fans were asked to pay a £50 deposit for the £195 passes, with the balance falling due the first week of April.

The 20,000 tickets that went on sale in the middle of the month were ones that were returned because the buyers realised they won’t be able to make it or failed to meet the payment plan.

Those who failed to make the second payment will get a £40 refund, with £10 held back to cover administration costs.

The festival apologised through its GlastoFest Twitter account to those who didn’t get a ticket, explaining that “demand hugely outstripped supply.”

Glastonbury chief Michael Eavis had decided that this year the event would take one of its regular breaks, but then changed his mind because taking a break in 2012 would avoid clashing with the 2012 London Olympics.

He feels that staging the games will put a huge strain on the country’s police resources and increase demand for festival fixtures such as portable toilets.

Since Glastonbury started, it’s occasionally taken a year off, which Eavis says gives the festival staff and the farmland site the chance to recover.

This year’s Glastonbury lineup includes U2, Coldplay, Beyoncé, Morrissey, The Chemical Brothers, Mumford and Sons, White Lies and Kaiser Chiefs.

The festival is also one of the 14 UK outdoors to have won one of the Industry Green certificates handed out by Julie’s Bicycle, the nonprofit organisation that works with the creative industries to support environmental sustainability.

The other winners were The Big Chill, Grass Roots, Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, Isle of Wight, Latitude, Leeds and Reading, Lovebox, Shambala, Sonisphere, T in the Park, Truck Festival and Wood Festival.

The IG certification scheme recognises evidenced commitment to understanding, measuring, improving and communicating environmental initiatives with an emphasis on lowering carbon emissions year on year.