Fright Night Ticket Fiasco Sparks Outrage

Tickets for the St Andrews Student Union’s flagship Fright Night event dropped two days early on Wednesday, 15 October, selling out before most students even knew they went live. The Union had advertised a 9am release for Friday, 17 October on Instagram, triggering outrage when would-be buyers discovered the early sell-out.

Third-year student Eve Thomson was one of the many students who found themselves ticketless for Fright Night. Thomson told The Saint, “I think they shouldn't have released the tickets early because then people thought they were doing it on Friday, but they were already sold out, so it is very frustrating.”

Thomson continued, “I would like to know how there wasn’t this issue in the last couple [of] years — especially when they didn't have 601 — so surely there was a smaller capacity [...] I don’t remember it being this bad.”

Following the overwhelmingly negative response from students regarding the early ticket release, the Union made an Instagram post on Thursday 16 October, announcing that they would release another batch of tickets at the originally advertised time. The post stated that  “due to overwhelming demand from the early bird sales for Fright Night, a decision was made yesterday to release our general sale tickets early.” 

One student who managed to secure a ticket in the highly sought-after release was third-year Kat Mortimer. Even successful buyers say they’re frustrated by the confusion over how — and when — the tickets were sold. Mortimer told The Saint, “I just think it’s really odd. I’m a third-year student, and I’ve been going to pretty much all of the big Union events since first year, and I’ve never known them to release tickets in the way they did for Fright Night. It's a shame that so many people missed out because of it.”

Despite this second release of tickets on Friday 17 October — which was the originally advertised date — many students still find themselves without anywhere to go on Halloween night. This is evident from the massive influx of students seeking resale tickets on the St Andrews ticket exchange Facebook page. The page has been flooded with requests from students desperately seeking a coveted Fright Night ticket, with students offering to pay more than double the original price.

Once again, the Union attempted to rectify this mistake by creating a waitlist, which students can sign up for using their email. However, it is up for debate if this will fix the current situation. Mortimer commented on the new waitlist: “I don’t really think there’s anything they can really do to fix the situation, so I guess the waitlist is a nice effort. However, their mistake isn't really something you can fix because you can’t do anything about the [number] of tickets already purchased if the Union is at capacity. I guess the best thing they can do is learn from this mistake.”

Fright Night tickets for 2025 have been available to buy on the Union Events website since last year, put on sale immediately after Fright Night 2024. There has been speculation over whether this is the reason why tickets were sold out so quickly, especially considering first-year students would not have been able to purchase tickets so far in advance, leaving them at a disadvantage in the Fright Night ticket scavenge.

The Saint reached out to the Union for information regarding how the waitlist system will work. The Saint also asked the Union to respond to the concerningly high rates at which resale tickets are being sold, as well as a general comment to address student concerns over the ticket debacle. However, at the time of publication, The Saint received no response.

Image by Ada Newton