PEOPLE WHO PAID up to €5,000 for tickets to the Web Summit in Lisbon are being forced to watch from screens outside.
The Web Summit website confirms that the event is sold out with 53,056 people attending.
The price for a general attendee ticket for the event cost around €700.
There were five time options available – super early, early, regular, late and late late.
Late late ticket prices started at €1,000 for exhibition floor only and rose to €3,000 for a General Attendee, €4,245 for Premium and €5,245 for the Platinum ticket.
One attendee told TheJournal.ie how she was in the last batch to get inside and that she had to ‘literally jump over a fence’.
Meanwhile, her friends, who also prepaid for tickets, were left outside in the cold.
Another described his disappointment at not being able to get inside the venue, saying:
I can understand wanting to create a buzz and have a packed venue for your opening but this was done at the expense of paying customers under the impression they’d be able to participate in the full experience.
“I’m optimistic for the rest of the conference but If it ends up like the opening there’s no way I’ll be able to justify the expense again.”
The co-founder of Web Summit, Paddy Cosgrave, tweeted that an outdoor screen was put up “in case we reach capacity”.
The Web Summit Head of Communications Mike Harvey told TheJournal.ie:
We understand some people weren’t able to get in. There was a lot of enthusiasm in the crowd when you think about people wanting to come along. So we are going to look at what happened there and see what can be done.
Those inside the venue are reporting that the event is going well – apart from a small WiFi hiccup early on.
Cosgrave announced that Web Summit would not be hosted in Dublin this year ahead of last year’s event, he cited unreliable WiFi at the RDS, issues with traffic management, public transport and hotel costs as influential factors.
Earlier today there were positive reports that the registration was a smooth process.
Web Summit hosts numerous tech events around the world in cities such as New Orleans, Madrid and Hong Kong.
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