When Graham Chapman saw the bargain bin prices that Burning Man tickets were reselling for online, his stomach dropped.
His partner could no longer make it, so Chapman needed to sell his extra pass. Typically this wouldn’t be a problem so close to the annual desert gathering. For years, demand for Burning Man tickets has outpaced supply, so Chapman, an experienced Burner who lives in San Francisco, wasn’t worried about selling one at face value (roughly $670, including fees).
But this isn’t a typical year: Burning Man still hasn’t sold out online, the organization hawked tickets in-person for the first time since 2011 and Facebook is flooded with people desperately trying to offload extra passes. Chapman quickly realized that he would almost certainly lose money.
“It sucks, because I don’t have that disposable income to spare,” he said. Most years, people are scorned for trying to sell their tickets for a profit as it’s seen as a betrayal of the event’s principles. But that philosophy hasn’t translated in reverse. Chapman felt insulted by someone describing themselves as a longtime Burner offering to buy his ticket for $300.
“It’s literally ticket gouging, just from the buyer’s end,” he said. “I just got the offer and I was like, ‘Eww, this is gross and skeezy and opportunistic.’” When another person proposed $200, Chapman seethed with anger, responding that “decommodification goes both ways.”
Some posts on Facebook asking to buy tickets for $300 or less have been greeted with open disdain (“Disgusting,” wrote one woman) or snark (“People being outraged that capitalism is real at BMan is actually hilarious,” wrote another). Regardless, the reality for sellers right now seems to be losing hundreds of dollars — or not finding a buyer at all.
“It’s been a nightmare,” said Tess C., a six-year Bay Area Burner tasked with helping her parents — themselves 20-year Burning Man veterans — offload their tickets. Her mom ultimately lost about $800 selling two tickets and a vehicle pass this week through a Facebook group that has been seeing dozens of new for-sale posts daily.
“Burning Man tickets are always a shit show,” said Tess, referring to the annual scramble to wrangle enough passes for her crew. “Usually it’s stressful to make sure we have tickets. This year, it was stressful to get rid of them.”
Left holding the bag
Theme camps, which can require lots of labor, often tend to overbuy so they won’t be left desperate to find tickets for all the people required to build their experience. This year, those groups “are getting screwed,” said a woman whose Burner nickname is Artemis and who usually attends with a post office camp that delivers messages around the Playa.
Artemis sold two tickets for $700, amounting to about a $700 loss, and others in her camp were in the same boat. She said those losses will likely result in fewer camps returning next year. Several ticket sellers said they wished the Burning Man organization had a better way to handle the process and ticket supply so camps weren’t resorting to chaotic Facebook groups with bottom-of-the-barrel prices at the last minute.
“There hasn’t been transparency from the org, and now these loyal camps are getting stuck with tickets,” Artemis said. “It’s frustrating.”
While the organization didn’t respond to The Standard’s specific questions, spokesperson Dominique Debucquoy-Dodley said that Burning Man was “adjusting 2024 ticket sales to reflect recent trends around the world that show last-minute ticket buying.”
Faced with steep losses, some people are looking for more creative ways to unload their tickets. Bay Area artist Kristy Headley asked on Facebook for folks to barter for her spare pass, pitching ideas like auto maintenance, custom framing or whimsical antiques. The goal was to turn her “loss into mutual gain,” she said.
She got the idea from a friend in her camp — which provides “cringe karaoke” and naked bacon breakfasts — who traded a ticket for a whitewater rafting trip at the Russian River. Headley turned down a three-night Airbnb stay in Texas during Wurstfest because of the additional travel expenses, but she’s holding out hope.
“There are things that I’m interested in that you just don’t come across very often,” Headley said of her barter request. “I just wanted to open that up and thought that novelty might be fun, too.”
Bandwagon Burners
After all, getting something is better than nothing. Martin Rauchbauer decided to cut his losses and sell his extra ticket for $300. The Bay Area resident plans to head to the desert to start building a caged heart globe art piece early next week, so taking the nearly $400 hit now at least provides peace of mind that someone will use his spare.
“Of course it’s a bummer to lose money,” Rauchbauer said. “But Burning Man has been criticized for being elitist and unaffordable. So whatever the reason is for this year’s lowered demand, I think it’s good that people that might not otherwise come may have the opportunity to go for the first time.”
In contrast to Rauchbauer’s optimism, other Burners are fretting about the surge of last-minute attendees.
“How good Burning Man is is proportional to how interesting the people are, multiplied by the effort of the people who are going,” said Bay Area–based Leo, who asked to withhold his last name for privacy.
The five-time Burner had to duck out this year, leaving him with two spare tickets. He’s concerned that people hopping on the last-minute bandwagon won’t be as prepared to contribute to the service-and-gift economy that keeps the event humming.
While Leo still hasn’t sold his tickets — the market seems to be pegged at $275 per pass, and he isn’t financially (or emotionally) prepared to go that low — he hopes that by next week some of the Facebook frenzy will have simmered down and he’ll be able to find a buyer.
“I’m more sad for Burning Man as a whole than I am about losing $400 or $500,” Leo said. “Everyone always claims, like, ‘the end of Burning Man,’ right? But I don’t know, maybe it is. Everything ends at some point.”
Still, Chapman, for one, is incredibly excited about getting back out in the dust. He managed to sell his extra ticket for $450, meaning he lost less than $200. His theme camp provides snacks with a side of mischief, including a “sensual hot dog eating contest.”
“The magic of Burning Man is still going to be there,” he said. “It’s a lot of work, but you get out 10 times more than what you put in.”