U2 sell out OIympic Stadium in under an hour

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As expected, all 49,000 tickets to a gig in the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki by the Irish megaband U2 next August were snapped up on Monday morning.
      The concert, part of the band's 360° World Tour, was effectively sold out within an hour of tickets coming on sale, according to Risto Juvonen of the promoters Live Nation.
      In this case, not all the available tickets came on sale according to the Monday schedule, as U2 fan-club members had been able to take advantage of a presale arrangement last week.
     
Normally such presale systems only account for a few hundred tickets, but in the case of U2 something like 8,000 tickets were taken up in advance, which Juvonen regards as unprecedented.
      "For instance in the case of the big Madonna concert in August, only some hundreds of tickets went by this route", said Juvonen.
      His company Live Nation's regular customers who have registered to join the "Events Club" also had the chance to get in early, and a further 2,800 tickets disappeared that way.
      Unlike in most concert ticket sales, there will not be returns coming back into circulation for the U2 gig. On this occasion there was no possibility of reserving tickets, but all tickets were sold and paid for on the spot.
     
According to Juvonen, the sale this time went without any major snafus, even though outlets and online sales were swamped by the demand.
      "Naturally those who did not manage to get tickets have complained, but of the recent large concerts we have seen, this was the best performance on the ticket sales front yet", he reckoned.
      The biggest problems occurred at certain R-Kiosk outlets, where the sale of tickets effectively paralysed all other business.
     
U2 will play the Olympic Stadium on Friday, August 20th, 2010.
      This will be the Irish band's third appearance in Finland. They played the Ruisrock festival in Turku in 1982 and have previously headlined at the Olympic Stadium in 1997.


Links:
  U2 official site

Helsingin Sanomat