Black Sabbath gave me frostbite. Alright, that’s being overly dramatic, but that’s certainly how it felt after four hours spent waiting outside for the box office to open at Birmingham’s O2 Academy in early 2012. The band had just announced a hometown gig in the – relatively – small confines of the Academy, and with a capacity of just over 3,000 people it was fair to say demand was likely to far outstrip availability. At that point, the Academy still had a physical box office that would open at 9am, meaning rather than entering the race to get tickets online or via phone, if I just simply popped along to the box office, I could get in, pay and leave with my tickets before most people had even managed to get the webpage loaded up. ‘Oh-ho-ho, you crafty genius’, I told myself. I was wrong.
Rocking up to the Academy at 6am, despite the fact it was still dark, deep winter and freezing, there were maybe 150-200 people already waiting for the box office. So, we waited. The sun came up, but the temperature stubbornly stuck at, "It's a bit chilly, innit?" Still we waited. At one point, security walked through and counted the faces in the queue; when they hit a hundred, they declared anyone past that point wasn’t getting tickets. Still, we waited. Finally, 9am hit and the box office opened, a steady tide of people stepping in and buying tickets and, by around 10am, it was finally my turn. No more waiting; I’d got my tickets. All of this to say: how is it that ticketing has got so much worse since then?
