Oxegen festival director rejects suggestions of slow ticket sales

OXEGEN’S FESTIVAL organisers have rejected suggestions that ticket sales for this year’s event are slow. Festival director John Probyn has confidently predicted that 70,000 fans will attend on Friday and Saturday with the event approaching an 80,000 sell-out on Sunday. The strong final night line-up includes Glastonbury headliners Beyonce and Coldplay.

The festival at Punchestown racecourse in Co Kildare had been a sell-out by this stage in boom times, but the absence of so many of its target audience of 18- to 25- year-olds as a result of emigration, summer holidays working abroad, unemployment or lack of funds means tickets are still on sale.

Mr Probyn said this year’s line-up, which also features The Black Eyed Peas, Foo Fighters and Arctic Monkeys, is the “best that there has ever been at one single festival in Europe” and that ticket sales would be “no different from previous years”.

The strong sales of day tickets may be down to the weather and in that regard, the festival, which has had no luck with the weather in recent years, is looking at a distinctly mixed bag.

Met Éireann forecaster Dr Klara Finkele said tomorrow and Friday were likely to be cool with a chance of heavy showers turning to persistent rain and maximums of just 15 degrees – although revellers might equally escape with just a few showers.

The weekend forecast is much better with Saturday shaping up to be a pleasant, sunny day with only passing showers and highs of 20 degrees. Sunday is forecast to be something similar though it will be significantly cooler.

Mr Probyn said they were continually making changes to the site to alleviate the mud problems and that extra money had been spent on the drainage systems, which were clogged last year.

Previous site changes involved putting in gravel paths away from the stages to preserve the grass and further roads around the venue. “If it rains, it rains, but I’m more confident that we can deal with it,” he said.

For the first time Oxegen will have a Penneys outlet this year where fans can buy cheap replacements for their clothes if they become covered in mud.

About 200 gardaí will be on duty over the weekend. They have decided to take a very modern approach to their policing with a Twitter account that they used during the Queen and President Obama’s visit.

The account @gardatraffic will give an up-to-date appraisal of traffic and public safety issues at Oxegen this year.

“We encourage those who are attending and parents of those attending to look at Twitter because it is in real time,” said Garda spokesman Supt John Gilligan yesterday.

The concert site opens tomorrow afternoon and will close on Monday afternoon.