Burning Man festival fails to sell out for first time in a decade

For over a decade, tickets to Burning Man have consistently sold out almost instantly, sometimes within minutes. However, this year, less than two weeks before the festival begins, tickets are still available. This unusual situation has raised concerns about the future of the annual desert event, especially given the ongoing climate crisis and economic instability.

Burning Man, which takes place each year in Nevada's remote Black Rock Desert, started on a San Francisco beach in 1986. Since 2011, the event has sold out annually, according to Alysia Dynamik, executive director of The Generator, a maker space in Reno, Nevada, and a festival attendee since 2010.

Tickets are typically released in tiers, with some sold early in the year and the main sale starting in April. In the past, these tickets were quickly purchased. But this year is different. On July 31, Burning Man, with a capacity of 73,000, announced a last-minute sale of 3,000 tickets. As of Tuesday, tickets were still available.

"Adjusting 2024 ticket sales to reflect recent global trends of last-minute buying, and continuing to sell tickets until the maximum Black Rock City population count is reached, encourages immediacy and allows more people to immerse themselves in the global Burning Man cultural movement," said Dominique Debucquoy-Dodley, associate director of communications for the Burning Man Project, in an email to The Guardian.

Longtime festival attendees point to a challenging few years and economic uncertainty as possible reasons for the slower ticket sales this year. The festival was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by record temperatures in 2022, and heavy rains in 2023 that turned the playa into mud, trapping attendees for days.

"The last few years have been tough for weather and planning," said Kaden Sinclair, president of the Idaho Burners Alliance, which runs the Xanadu maker space in Boise. He mentioned extreme heat, which makes it hard to enjoy the event "when it feels like an inferno." Sinclair, who has attended Burning Man 14 times since 2004, will not be going this year.

"The rain last year made people nervous," Dynamik noted, although she added that while the weather did make it challenging to leave the event, it wasn’t as bad on the ground as reported by those outside the festival.

While weather has been a concern, Sinclair believes another factor may be impacting sales this year. "With food and housing taking priority, many are choosing to skip a year or two to secure their living situations," he said. Tickets to Burning Man start at $575, but Sinclair pointed out that costs can be much higher for many participants, especially those who enjoy bringing large art installations, which are mostly self-funded and can run into the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Despite concerns about how low ticket sales could affect Burning Man's financial stability, Dynamik doesn’t see the festival's struggle to sell out as entirely negative. In recent years, attendance has surged, with wealthy festivalgoers flocking to the event. However, not all are as committed to the festival's core principles of "radical self-reliance" and "de-commodification" as longtime attendees.

"As someone who’s been going since before it started selling out, there’s been a lot of perception that a scarcity model was created," she said, referring to the exclusivity that came with limited tickets. "I think culturally, most people don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing for it to revert to pre-scarcity."