Amsterdammers in turmoil about chaotic ticket issue for festival on the ring road: what’s going on?

They were not easy weeks for football -loving Amsterdammers. But is the mokummers also drilled through the party of the century?

On October 27 it is exactly 750 years ago that Amsterdam – or actually: Amstelredamme – thanks to Count Floris V. and that will be celebrated on June 21, on the longest day of the year, extensively with a free festival on a part of the ring road around the city. The hype has been great for months: « If all goes well, people will still talk about it in twenty years, » said program director Sietse Bakker Hoopvol in return for Het Parool. According to the organization, public research showed that around 680,000 people want to come, while there are ‘only’ 280,000 tickets. For comparison: for Lowlands there are 65,000 tickets this year.

The ticket issue, Wednesday morning from 10 a.m., was chaotic and left thousands of Amsterdammers disrupted. Countless stories went around online from people who had been in the online queue for hours. For nothing. While people who did not live in Amsterdam did have tickets! A live blog from Het Parool served as an online wailing wall, where people could tell their story. « It makes me sick, » wrote an Amsterdammer. The word « traumaatje » fell.

What’s going on? Three questions.

1. What is about to happen in Amsterdam?

The festival On the ring Must be the highlight of all celebrations around 750 years of Amsterdam. On Saturday, June 21, a 15 -kilometer part of the normally cold, polluted ring road around Amsterdam will change for one day in a festival site. There will be a special ‘birthday forest’: for one day, 750 adult trees in planters are rolled onto the highway, and 7,500 younger trees. In the morning a (sold -out) running match of 7.5 kilometers takes place in which 20,000 people participate. There are free wedding ceremonies, for which four hundred couples signed up. And of course there is singing, smartlaps from Marco Schuitmaker, and saved on dancing music from DJs, selected by the iconic Amsterdam party organization Audio Obscura.

To make all this possible, a huge logistics operation is required. The municipality closes the inner part of the A10 ring for three days for cars: on 20, 21 and 22 June. The outer ring remains accessible to the emergency services and public transport. De Telegraaf written The fact that even office staff from public transport company GVB will have to jump on the 21st to guide the visitor flows.

The Amsterdam city council has set aside 27 million euros for the anniversary. The municipality does not dare say how many people are involved in the organization, except that there are « a lot, both in preparation and the implementation on the day itself ».

2. What went wrong on Wednesday?

Many tens of thousands of people were neatly ready on Wednesday morning at 10 am to get tickets. But many people did not get any further than the queue, or got error messages. The frustration grew when it turned out that others had scored tickets, some of dozens, by using different telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. Some tickets ended up at Marktplaats, where people quickly offered dozens of euros.

Later in the afternoon it turned out that the long queue could be skipped by simply adjusting the URL. So -called authorization controls, which could have guaranteed the exclusivity of the transaction, could have prevented that – but they were not set. « Oil dom and real fiddling, » wrote an Amsterdammer on the Wailing Wall of Het Parool. Comedian Peter Pannekoek hurled on X The hashtag #foutenfestival into the world.

According to Jeroen van Glabbeek, CEO of CM.com, the platform behind the ticket issue, it all went well, he said Wednesday in return for Het Parool. « Behind the scenes we are very satisfied. (…) If you sell hundreds of thousands of cards in one day, something is always wrong with a small percentage. » Van Glabbeek says that « about a million people » were in the queue at the same time. That you could reserve multiple tickets appears to have been the intention: you could also order for your friends. Later that was adjusted in consultation with the municipality.

3. And now?

Unlike cm.com, the municipality wrote Thursday In a press release That the ordering process « not completely flawless » had expired. The municipality promises that all orders will be tested afterwards for the maximum number of tickets. « If that number is too high, the order can be canceled and these tickets will become available again. » Furthermore, the organization warned not to buy tickets through Marktplaats, which are « invalid and blocked ».

The key question is how the organization of hamsterers, or from people who have managed to circumvent the queue, will distinguish from tickets that have been obtained in a legitimate way. After all, this is only possible by checking by reservation whether it is made from an IP address from which too many or unlawful tickets are arranged. Something like that can take weeks and there is not that much time.

In one Declaration published on Thursday evening The organization writes that CM.COM was asked to « seriously investigate » the complaints and « to submit solutions as quickly as possible. » Cm.com was unable to NRC to speak about this.

So there is another chance that some tickets will be released again, but there will not be a lot. According to the municipality, no fewer than 80,000 people left their e-mail address to be kept informed. For those who definitively misunderstand, the Ring Oost is always freely accessible. There you can encourage the 20,000 runners in the morning, and after 4 p.m. walk or cycle yourself, as if you were at the deserted Berlin airport Tempelhof.

With the cooperation of Lian Hof.



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