(Munster, IN) – Another Three Floyds update…
[3/14 Update: Going on Stubhub starting at $165/ticket. A posting on Craigslist was going for half of that.]
Dark Lord Day tickets sold out in 23 minutes according to a message from the brewery’s Twitter account. Many tweeted with glee but about successfully getting tickets but many also said they ran into sold out messages well before Three Floyds announced that they were sold out, some even within 4 minutes. [3/19 Update: Three Floyds’ Facebook page is looking pretty fugly right now.]
There was such a frenzy for tickets that #DLD became a trending topic on Twitter in Chicago. There were nearly 850 tweets within the past hour about the sale.
In other news FFF news, I received this email yesterday from fellow Indiana brewer, Sun King Brewing:
“As you may or may not know, Sun King’s staff recently traveled to Munster to make a collaborative brew with 3 Floyds. Since both breweries make celebrated American pale ales (Alpha King and Osiris, respectively), 3 Floyds owner Nick Floyd, head brewer Barnaby Struve, and Sun King brewer/owners Clay Robinson and Dave Colt quickly agreed on a recipe for 3 Kings Pale Ale, a specialty beer that will be tapped in Munster and Indianapolis in April to draw attention to our lobbying efforts. Lobbying efforts for what you say? Funny you should ask…
According to Indiana law, a brewer cannot operate a tasting room, brew pub, or self-distribute its product if it produces more than 20,000 barrels (approximately 40,000 kegs) a year. With 3 Floyds on pace to exceed 20,000 barrels this year, the brewery is faced with either shutting down its brewpub or it’s brewing operation or moving their entire enterprise to Illinois. Sun King is on pace to hit the 20,000 barrel limit in 2013, when it will either have to stopped self-distributing its product or curtail growth permanently.”
Stay tuned for more details on this collaboration and their legislative battle.
I think they sold out alot faster than 23 minutes. People on Beer Advocate were saying they couldn’t get tickets at 1:05pm as all the slots were sold out.
I’m not sure how the software works but people were definitely getting tickets after 10 or even 20 mins. Maybe it got clogged at certain times resulting in these error messages? Not sure but I did indicate that there were errors on the site in my post.
I tried to get tickets at 1:02, sold out. no way was it 23 mins. I also refreshed and tried to buy in different time slots, no go. Something was up with the site, as per usual with FFF.
Here’s what happened: Thousands got on right at 2:00 (ET), some with multiple computers, and then when they got to checkout with both computers, they only completed checkout with one. But the other computer held the tickets until the hold timed out after fifteen minutes. At 2:15 on the nose, a bunch more sales went through, including mine and my wife’s.
I’m not buying that they sold out after 23 minutes, but it wasn’t much longer. Group A was no longer being offered starting at around 2:37, Group B at 2:45, and Group C finally disappeared completely and the “There are no more tickets to this event” message appeared around 2:50.
My friends an I tried from the second tickets went on sale to a half hour later and only one of us got tickets. The site wouldn’t load and just hung in the middle of the process for the first 10 minutes or so. By the time the site was loading properly the tickets were gone. We kept trying for at least 15 more minutes and nothing was showing up. Not sure why some people were getting tickets showing up that late but it was definitely not true for everybody.
Via comments from a phone call to the brewery:
‘…said this year’s tickets sold out in four minutes, 35 seconds on Saturday. They’ve sold out in three minutes in the past. He said it’s “a mystery” how many tickets were sold.’
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