Credit: Found On Internet

In October, 100,000 tickets for Glastonbury 2009 will be open to reservation for a £50 deposit. The full ticket price will then be payable on April 1 next year, with people who choose not to follow-up on their early deposit being charged £10.

Michael Eavis has cropped up on the BBC, bleating on about how this was a reaction to "the confusion surround the sale of this year's tickets". Which is strange, because when the tickets initally went on sale, there were no differences to how they were sold in 2007. The only person who was confused about the sale of tickets was Eavis himself who for some reason couldn't see that such a piss-poor line-up would fail to get people's festival juices flowing.

Of course, this practise has gone on for years - festivals sell a batch of tickets immediately after the festival ends, ostensibly billed as "at this year's prices" so people feel they are beating the inevitable price hike. Of course, the fact that the festival will have tens of thousands of £££ in early-bird ticket sales to play with immediately is the festival organiser's incentive. Except Glastonbury's punitive £10 charge surely shows up the mercenary intent here. I guess the fact that they only sold-out the day the festival opened was enough to shock Eavis into action.

All those £10 charges will surely make up for any ticket shortfall next year, after all.