BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend

Tickets[edit]

Tickets to the festival are, notably, free (except the small booking fee which was introduced from the 2012 event onwards) but are usually now restricted to one pair per person. Prior to 2006, a ticket booth would be set up in an easy location in the centre of the hosting city, and anybody who wished to obtain a pair of tickets would queue up, before a Radio 1 DJ gave them out (pairs of tickets for the Saturday given away on a Saturday and on the following day for the Sunday), on a first-come first-served basis. The theory there was that the majority of tickets would go to local residents, as people from further away would not make the journey. However, as more and more 'non-local' residents came to the giveaways, and the capacity at the events grew year-on-year, it was decided that a different system was needed. From 2006, therefore, pairs of tickets have been given away through an online lottery. People wishing to attend register on the BBC Radio 1 website and pairs of tickets are then randomly allocated and given out. In order to make sure that those who live locally get the majority of tickets, the applications are split into categories of 'local postcodes' and 'other postcodes' and the majority of the tickets (usually 95%) are reserved for the former.


Despite the tickets being free, some people often attempt to sell them on eBay, and in recent years this has meant that various security measures have been introduced, most notably the barcodes on tickets which are scanned at the gate, the rule that the person whose name is registered on the ticket has to be in attendance and, from 2012, passport-style pictures being required as part of the application process. Tickets are also given away as prizes via various competitions held on Radio 1 (and now 1Xtra) in the weeks running up to the event, which is usually the only way in which members of the public can obtain passes for both days of the event. For the 2013 event, no pre-registration was necessary, and instead all tickets were given away on a 'first come first served' basis - albeit still with the skewing of 90% of tickets being held back for residents of Northern Ireland. After an initial 24-hour delay due to technical difficulties, the tickets all sold out within an hour. 2014's event in Glasgow saw the 'first come first served' ticket release return with no pre-registration needed. 50% of tickets were reserved for residents within the boundaries of Glasgow City Council with a further 45% reserved for those in the rest of Scotland. However, for the first time ever, members of the public could obtain tickets to all three days of the festival. This led to complaints from some disappointed fans who were left without tickets to any day while others bagged tickets for the entire weekend.


For the 2006 event in Dundee, less than half of the tickets were given to local residents,^[32] and allegations were made of postal workers stealing tickets.^[33]