Questions have been raised over the organisation of Big D this year after tickets have failed to sell out despite being on sale for over a month.
This is in stark contrast to previous years, when the YUSU website crashed as hundreds of students sought to buy tickets immediately, with some students reporting that they had to miss lectures to do so.
Nevertheless, it seems this year demand has slowed substantially. A reported 300 tickets have yet to sell with less than three weeks to go.
Derwent Vice-Chair, Lucy Hoban, has hit back at the doubters insisting that she is “not at all concerned” with the slow ticket sales, citing the increased capacity of this year’s event. An additional stage and marquee has meant an increase in the overall event capacity. Hoban also added that, “As well as this, we have withheld the announcement act, something that has never happened before.”
The announcement of the final act is due on Tuesday evening. Once this has been released, Hoban said she is “certain ticket sales will increase, with hope it will sell out.”
Fears remain that this year’s event will become one of the lowest selling Big D events in recent memory.
A Derwent fresher, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Vision that the third act will make all the difference as to whether him and his friends attend or not.
“I’m not a big Roll Deep or Reverend and The Makers fan. I expect the third act will be a dance act, which is potentially good. We’ll see.”
Others maintain that the event in general is itself worth the £25 ticket price. First-year History of Art student Katie Thomas told Vision that, “Although the line up isnt necessarily that exciting, I’ve heard so many good things about the event that I got my ticket on the day they came out. I think it’s going to be mint.”
Hoban also stressed that the main concern is not whether or not the event sells out, but the success of the event itself.
“Despite last year not selling out, it was still an amazing event and made thousands of pounds for charity. Hopefully it will be better than ever before.”
You managed to spell Hoban right the first time but managed to write Hobden for the rest of the article.
But yeah, the acts are shite.
Are there 300 or so tickets left, or have they sold them in batches like last year, and are still on the first batch? Cause if it’s the latter, they’re sceee-rewed.
Lucy, last year’s Big D sold out with a month to go.