Web Based Ticket Lottery

June 25, 2019 8:46 AM

What software can organize a lottery for high demand event tickets?

At my NYC non-profit, we occasionally host events for the public where demand far exceeds available space. To the tune of all seats filling up in 30 minutes, and a wait list of hundreds. Nevertheless, people cancel or fail to confirm their tickets, and some seats go unfilled. (And rush tickets aren't feasible due to attendance prerequisites)

We currently manage the tickets and wait list with eventbrite. I want to set up a lottery system for a fairer distribution of tickets. The ideal system would let applicants register, then at some point award tickets randomly. If a person cancels or doesn't confirm, that ticket would then be passed to the next random applicant in line.

What can do this? Google is lousy with cash lottery get rich schemes...

posted by slagerst to Grab Bag (2 answers total)

This is a problem that burn events (patterned after Burning Man) have been dealing with for years. There are a couple of online ticket services that have grown out of burn events: Burner Tickets and Quicket. I know that the former handles lotteries, and I think the latter does. My own organization also has a lottery process, but it's completely analog: people mail in a paper ticket request along with a money order, and the requests are drawn from bins at random until we get down to the cap.
posted by adamrice at 10:40 AM on June 25, 2019

Mike Doughty just did something like this for his current tour using seated. I've used brown paper tickets for events, but dunno if they do a lottery/wait-list.
posted by j_curiouser at 10:46 AM on June 25, 2019