Three-quarters of Garth Brooks tickets already refunded

The money for more than three-quarters of the tickets for the cancelled Garth Brooks concerts in Croke Park has been refunded, Ticketmaster has said.

Some 330,000 tickets were refunded as of this morning, on the day Brooks was supposed to start his five night stand in Croke Park.

A Ticketmaster spokesman said: “We are happy that the process Ticketmaster put in place to process this unprecedented amount of tickets is working efficiently.

“To date we are keeping pace with the postal applications as they are received and are increasing staffing levels further to deal with the huge volume of applications now arriving.”

Thousands of forlorn Garth Brooks fans from overseas have decided to make the trip to Dublin, irrespective of the fact that the concerts have been cancelled.

Dublin Airport put on a show this morning for them and handed out free Garth Brooks t-shirts to the first 200 fans through arrivals who were supposed to be going to the concerts.

The airport is also staging afternoon performances from various country bands as part of the Stetson in the City musical experience designed to give fans their country fix over the weekend.

Over the course of the day there will be 18 acts taking over the city’s airport, restaurants, bars, shops and pretty much anywhere they can fit their instruments.

Some 82.5 per cent or 330,000 tickets were sold in Ireland, north and south, while 12.5 per cent (or 50,000) were sold in Britain. Australia, Germany, US and Canada accounted for 12,000 tickets, while 8,000 (or 2 per cent) were sold in all other countries including Afghanistan and Costa Rica.

Ireland's big concert promoter Denis Desmond of MCD has said there is "nothing wrong with the planning or licencing laws" in relation to outdoor concerts. MCD were the promoters for the three One Direction concerts which took place earlier this year at Croke Park.

He appeared to blame the cancellation of all five shows on Brooks’ “all or nothing” ultimatum.

“People are forgetting that it was Garth Brooks’ decision not to do the shows. He could easily have done three in July and two later in the year or 2015,” Mr Desmond said.

“ Chances are he could have added a third and ended up doing six in total.”