Burning Man tickets sold at huge losses by desperate Burners

When Graham Chapman saw the bargain bin prices that Burning Man tickets were reselling for online, his stomach dropped.

His partner could no longer make it, so Chapman needed to sell his extra pass. Typically this wouldn’t be a problem so close to the annual desert gathering. For years, demand for Burning Man tickets has outpaced supply, so Chapman, an experienced Burner who lives in San Francisco, wasn’t worried about selling one at face value (roughly $670, including fees).

But this isn’t a typical year: Burning Man still hasn’t sold out online, the organization hawked tickets in-person for the first time since 2011 and Facebook is flooded with people desperately trying to offload extra passes. Chapman quickly realized that he would almost certainly lose money.

“It sucks, because I don’t have that disposable income to spare,” he said. Most years, people are scorned for trying to sell their tickets for a profit as it’s seen as a betrayal of the event’s principles. But that philosophy hasn’t translated in reverse. Chapman felt insulted by someone describing themselves as a longtime Burner offering to buy his ticket for $300.

“It’s literally ticket gouging, just from the buyer’s end,” he said. “I just got the offer and I was like, ‘Eww, this is gross and skeezy and opportunistic.’” When another person proposed $200, Chapman seethed with anger, responding that “decommodification goes both ways.”