The Bureau of Land Management restricts Burning Man to a maximum of 50,000 participants averaged across the days (last year the peak population was 53,963). To maintain that, Black Rock City Corporation caps the tickets at 50,000. Last year, for the first time they sold out.

Although you can apply for ticket bursaries, Burning Man is already skewed toward the wealthy, because it costs far more than just the ticket price to get to the black rock desert and survive there for a week. If demand was controlled by increasing the price of tickets, it would skew even further.* So Black Rock City Corporation has decided to sell tickets in a lottery. Interestingly, the tickets are still being priced in four tiers, as they were when ticket prices increased over time – from $240 to $420. This will actually increase economic diversity over previous years because some of the low price tickets will go to people who can only afford to go at that price, not simply the most organized Burners. I think that’s worth it in exchanged for added complexity. Although just like previous years, people need to have budgeted the money early in the year to buy tickets.

Most of the tickets are being lotteried in maximum batches of two, probably to prevent scalpers. For the first time, Black Rock City Corporation will create an online market place for reselling tickets, presumably providing seller verification to prevent fakes. It’ll be interesting to see how the market responds to the scarcity, especially with a central marketplace rather than eBay, Craigslist, etc.

* If poor people don’t go to Burning Man for cultural as well as economic reasons, then keeping ticket price down works as a subsidy – just like university tuition.