Glastonbury's £20 live-stream locked out paying fans for two hours, then went free

On Saturday 22 May 2021, Glastonbury Festival staged a one-night virtual concert from Worthy Farm, with Coldplay, Haim, Jorja Smith, George Ezra, Kano and Wolf Alice on the bill. Fans paid £20 for access. The festival had been forced to cancel for two consecutive years, and every performer waived their fee, with proceeds intended to secure the festival's future.

The BBC reported that technical issues meant thousands of ticket holders who tried to watch received an error and were denied entry, with problems from the outset of the 19:00 BST show. Driift Live, the technology company that helped organise the stream, told fans to keep trying. Some viewers got in at 18:53 BST, but at least one saw the stream fail at 20:25 BST and could not get back in.

Shortly before 21:00 BST, after about two hours of problems, organisers opened a free stream to anyone, paid or not. The replacement stream could only be rewound by an hour, so the early sets were unavailable. Conservative MP Steve Brine called the situation a 'shambles' and said the system was clearly unable to handle the paying audience.

Two hours of lost access for paying viewers, a free stream opened to all, and refunds on request for thousands of £20 ticket holders.

The access system rejected valid ticket codes at the start of the show, which fans reported as 'invalid code' errors.

The BBC report did not name a root cause; Driift Live only asked viewers to keep trying while it fixed the problem.

The failure persisted for two hours, long enough that the evening's performances were already due to run beyond midnight.

The free fallback stream limited rewind to one hour, so the opening acts were still out of reach.

A paid live event has one moment that matters. Load-test the entry system for the full audience, and decide the fallback before doors open, not two hours into the show.

Emily Eavis said she was 'so sorry'. Organisers said the whole film would be available to ticket holders for a week from the Sunday, and that ticket holders who could not access the show would be offered a refund on request. The BBC expected thousands of refund demands.