Bargaining for a seat: how to get to the Bolshoi for "The Nutcracker" on December 31
On December 14, the Bolshoi Theater will open ticket sales for performances of the ballet "The Nutcracker", which will take place on New Year's Eve. The shows will be held twice - at 12:00 and 19:30. Passes for December 31 will be sold only through the official website of the GABT and on the Internet auction "Sber" - the new measure is designed to combat overbidders. Since December 2, passes for New Year's Eve performances have been sold according to the schedule available on the Bolshoi's website - the record amount paid at the commercial auction was 450 thousand rubles for two seats. Theatergoers express their dissatisfaction with the new sales system, while speculators admit that this year they have been squeezed out. On what difficulties you may encounter in the hope of seeing "The Nutcracker" at the Bolshoi on December 31 - in the material "Izvestia".
Shock price and the reaction of speculators
The auction, according to the plan of the directorate of the GABT, was supposed to cut off speculators. Now their profit is greatly reduced. For tickets more expensive than those bought at auction, it is not so easy to find a client. The record amount for which two tickets were sold at auction amounted to 450 thousand rubles.
- I attach tickets to "The Nutcracker" from year to year, and every time remained not in the money, but this year the picture was spoiled by the Bolshoi Theater more than doubled prices- shared with "Izvestia" specialist in the distribution of passes Boris. - Last year a parterre ticket was 20 thousand for all sessions, and this year it's 50 thousand. For many people it is already a psychological barrier. And to afford to pay even more expensive can only be a very wealthy client who is sure that December 31 will be in Moscow, and not somewhere on the islands in the ocean.
Passport registration has also affected sales, the reseller admits.
- We have to have orders in advance to buy a ticket for a particular customer. The fact that speculation of passes is going on outside the public field, you can estimate by "Avito". There are no tickets for "The Nutcracker" at the GABT," he added.
According to the reseller, the theater's late sale of seats this year is one of its strategic moves. After all, according to the rules of return tickets can be surrendered two days before the performance, but to sort out the application for a refund will be within ten days. That is, when buying a ticket, the speculator must be sure that he is buying a pass in the name of a real spectator, so as not to try to reissue it to another person.
"Izvestia" sent requests to the press services of "Sber" and GABT with a request to comment on the course of the auction, problems with bots and the success of the auction.
New measures and old problems
From October 1, all tickets to the Bolshoi Theater will be sold using passports. This year "The Nutcracker" was put up for auction late. Since December 2, there has been a daily battle among fans of the New Year's ballet on the GABT website. Everyone's timer is set for 9:55. From that minute on a low start thousands of spectators.
At 10:00, when the passes are posted on the site, everyone pokes at the red dots on the scheme of the auditorium. But the attempt to snag a ticket ends in success for a rare lucky few. As experts predicted, all almost instantly bought up by invisible participants of the competition.
- I assume that it will not be easy for ordinary viewers to buy tickets online either," Mikhail Minin, General Director of MTS Live, argued in a conversation with Izvestia. - It is possible that the Bolshoi Theater website will be attacked by bots. 30-40 companies that sell tickets have systems at their disposal that go to the site, click what they need, book and buy. The consequence of this process is an overloaded GABT portal. While the bots are buying up tickets, the average viewer won't be able to log on.
In 11 days of "The Nutcracker" sales, the Bolshoi Theater still hasn't dealt with the problem of bots buying up 20-second passes. The site of the theater is down at the moment of realization of seats. As "Izvestia" noticed, the same scheme has become active when buying tickets for upcoming performances: the pass appears on the site, but you can't put it in the cart - which was never the case before. If someone was ahead of you, there was a red inscription that the ticket was already taken. And if it's bots working, the seats just disappear, even from your personal cabinet.
- To combat one of the most acute problems of the market - speculation - we have proposed several measures," said Mikhail Minin, General Director of MTS Live. - For example, blocking of sites-doppelgangers of theaters on the basis of corresponding statements of cultural institutions - the initiative was announced at the meetings of two working groups of the public council of the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation.
Also, MTS Live has supplemented the data with the Cybert AI bot checking methodology, and now it recognizes and moderates user behavior on ticket windows and theater websites. In this way, Mikhail Minin explained, the system has been trained to block bots in working with the theater market, and now sites and showcases are protected from various types of cyberattacks.
Experts are wary of giving accurate forecasts on the results of the ticket auction on December 31. As it became clear from the previous auction, everything can be completely unpredictable. Only a very interested spectator, dreaming to celebrate the New Year under the chandelier of the main theater of the country, will lay out a tidy sum for passes. But if there will be the same battle for a seat in the parterre as a few days ago, when two passes were sold for 450 thousand rubles, then the lot of four tickets, which went for a million, seems to be a reality.
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