All of Glastonbury Festival's 112,000 tickets have sold out within a day.
Many people have been left frustrated and disappointed by a stricter ticketing system which has been brought in to help defeat touts.

Demand placed a huge strain on phone lines and a website as soon as tickets went on sale on Thursday evening.

Event organiser Michael Eavis said: "Just too many people want to come, it's very difficult for all of it to run smoothly".

BBC News Online has been inundated with e-mails from would-be festival goers who have been unable to obtain tickets.

Despite having to stay up all night, in some cases until 5:30am this morning, me and all my friends bar one have tickets

"My night chasing tickets"
Read more of your ticket buying experiences
Many spoke of their frustration of being unable to access the website and getting a constant engaged tone on the phone line.

They said they felt the new system, handled by a single ticket agency, Aloud, was simply unable to cope with demand.

The agency said it "can only apologise" to those who have failed to get through.

"We couldn't have predicted this demand," an Aloud spokeswoman told BBC News Online.

"The website got two million impressions in the first five minutes, with 2,500 people on the phone lines every minute," she said.

The new limit of two tickets per transaction meant many more people were chasing tickets than previous years.


We could have sold them out last night in five minutes, but is that a good thing?

Michael Eavis
Glastonbury organiser

Mr Eavis also admitted they have been overwhelmed with demand, but pledged improvements for the festival in 2005.

"The internet site went down in the night - the system overloaded. So we will need more equipment there next year," he said.

But he told BBC Radio Five Live that it was not necessarily desirable to sell the tickets as fast as possible.

"We can improve the software, definitely - but is it a good thing to sell them all out in one hour?

"We could have sold them out last night in five minutes, but is that a good thing? I don't think it is you know, I'd rather string it out a bit."

He blamed the heavy demand on the fact that details of headline acts - including Oasis and Sir Paul McCartney - had been leaked.

The evening opening had been an attempt to dissuade touts and allow people who are at school or at work to buy tickets.

Tickets had to be bought by debit card because organisers thought touts bought multiple tickets by credit card last year.

ID checks

But tickets are already being offered for inflated prices on internet auction site eBay, with one pair priced at £620.

Every ticket carries the name of the person who bought it. Identity checks may be carried out at the festival gates to ensure people have not bought tickets from touts.

Mr Eavis added that people who did not buy tickets from official outlets would not get in - but if anyone bought tickets but could not use them, they could let him know at his Worthy Farm base and he would re-sell them.

In the last few years, Mr Eavis - who has run the event since its birth in 1970 - has invested more and more money into preventing gate-crashers and drug dealers entering the site.

In 2002, he spent more than £2m on new fencing to keep out people who had not bought tickets.

Last year, he pleaded for people to stay at home if they did not have tickets. This year's festival takes place between 25-27 June.