Most ticket stories about sellout concerts start with a lead depicting how a particular show sold out in minutes. That’s why U2’s 12-hour journey to sell 63,000 ducats – about 5,250 per hour – is worth noting.
Tickets for U2’s first-ever Croatia concert scheduled for August 10 went on sale online and at brick & mortar ticket outlets, with folks lining up in freezing temperatures at the latter on the night before the onsale.
Tickets were priced at 250-2,000 Kuna ($45 to $356), and went on sale online at midnight, and at 9 a.m. at outlets.
But the sellout didn’t occur without at least one glitch. Fans overloaded the authorized seller’s ticket server, causing it to go down for a few hours, which helps explain why it took so long to sell out the event.
“We’ve never seen anything like that in our career,” said Maja Valjak from Lupa Promotion.
It also looks as if the onsale was almost as exciting as the actual show for fans.
Said Ksenija Pavlic, a 36-year-old mother of two who scored tickets online: “I’ve been waiting for this all my life and I wasn’t ready to miss it.”
Evidently a lot of Croatians feel that way. The country’s population was estimated to be just under 4.45 million in 2008. Factor in the 63,000 tickets sold and that means one ticket per 71 of the country’s citizens.