Some 56,000 of the 80,000 tickets for the U2 concert in Slane on August 25th were sold in outlets around the State.
The remainder were sold over the phone and through the Internet, with the latter accounting for the smallest proportion of sales, said Mr Justin Green of concert promoters MCD. There was no allocation for any outlet or method of payment. All three methods accessed the same mainframe.
There was a limit of six tickets per person and tickets sold out within 45 minutes of going on sale. Disappointment turned to anger on Grafton Street last Saturday when hundreds of fans who had queued overnight were told there were no more tickets. Gardai were called and one man was arrested. However, Mr Green said that in some towns everyone in the queue got a ticket. He said the Ticketmaster system had a capacity to sell 2,500 tickets a minute. "The problem was that demand far outstripped supply. We could easily have sold 250,000 tickets," he said. Disappointed fans have been writing to and e-mailing The Irish Times. One fan said he had logged on to the Internet on five machines at 7 a.m. last Saturday and had six phones on continuous redial but failed to secure a ticket.
Mr Green said there was no problem with the distribution.
"The problem was sheer demand."