51 thoughts on “No Line On The Horizon”

  1. Daisy Chainsaw

    Weren’t there tickets advertised on Seatwave before they actually went on sale? Ticketba$tard must reserve around 50% of tickets for their tout site and it’s galling that they get away with such price gouging.

    2. Norbet Cooper

      According to viagogo last night@ 9pm, only 3% of tickets were left, 79 general admission & 11 middle tier.

  2. Starina

    scalpers, schmalpers. it’s ticketmaster. they keep half the tickets back and then “resell” for huge profit. a rigged market. absolutely infuriating.

    1. postmanpat

      and they kick back most of those profits back to the artist (in this case U2) Ticketmaster are paid to act as a faceless corporation and happily take on the “bad guy” role but the real bad guys here are the bands that use Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster/Stubhub/whatever it’s called isn’t pocketing the €1250 from the super-sap fan that will pay for that ticket . they keep probably 10% . U2/Paul McGuiness keeps the rest and then Bono lectures about greed in that weird changing accent depending on which country he’s gigging in.

  3. On The Buses

    I can’t wait for Facebook owner Bono to sing about the ballymun flats to a bunch of stains that over a grand for the pleasure. Free-market econmics, baby.

      1. scottser

        paying a grand to listen to a band play a 30 year old album?
        even if i could afford to go, i could think of a million better things to spend that sort of wad on.

  4. Dermie

    I honestly don’t know why people are moaning about this. Why not just join the fan club and avail of the presale to buy 4 tickets. And don’t get me started on the Moran Q’ing since 4pm last Friday

        1. Birneybau2

          Ah, he did, retrospectively.

          “Moran is notable for receiving a red card in the 1985 FA Cup Final against Everton, the first player ever to be sent off in an FA Cup final. TV cameras revealed that he had gone for the ball, and not for Peter Reid in the offending tackle. He was later presented with the winner’s medal that had at first been withheld.”

          1. Brother Barnabas

            ah thanks – didn’t know that

            so kev got a medal AND a hug. who was the reap winner that day so?

            cracking winning goal from Norman a Whiteside if I recall correctly. am sure even bertie would acknowledge that.

          2. bertie blenkinsop

            Absolutely.
            Whiteside was a phenomenal talent, shame he burned brightly for such a short spell.
            Just to be clear Brother Barnabas, I’m not anti United, some of the best teams I’ve ever seen, especially in the Premier League era were United teams and I love Keano with a passion that’s bordering on unhealthy, but my heart belongs to Liverpool.
            it’s possible to support a team without being a knob about it. :)

      3. scottser

        does this new found interest in united mean you’ll following a proper football team from now on, bertie?

        1. bertie blenkinsop

          If I didn’t abandon them when Hodgson was in charge I’m hardly likely to now Scottser!

  6. Scundered

    Sickening that the powers that be have allowed this event to be ruined by sub-human levels of greed. Ticketmaster themselves of course being one of those powers.

  7. ivan

    ok here we go again. TICKETMASTER IS NOT THE PROBLEM. They might be part of it, but that’s it. If a certain amount of tickets at 9:02 have magically appeared on, say, Stubhub, or Viagogo, or Seatwave then either one of two things happened

    a) somebody got awfully awfully lucky and got tickets and then realised ‘rats, I’ve a work do that night, and i can’t go…I better sell them on’ or
    b) somebody didn’t put the tickets on general sale at all and just had them hoiked over to the secondary site.

    Ticketmaster get a % of the value of the sale but they don’t do this unilaterally on their own whim. They handled Tom Waits’ Phoenix Park gigs and you’ll recall the anti touting measures there.

    Today? That came from the promoter. And the promoter did this at the behest of the band. And you don’t need to be David McWilliams to work out why. This is a hot ticket. U2 know that. Same as Tom Waits knew his tickets were hot. Anyway

    a) Croke Park holds, say, 80,000 people.
    b) the ‘going rate’ for a stadium rawk gig nowadays is (for the sake of argument) €90
    c) they know that more than 80,000 people will want to go.
    d) they know that if supply is fixed at 80,000 tickets that (and i’m simplifying – i know there are different price tiers) actually there are a significant number of people who’ll pay more than €90.
    e) There are two ways of realising this higher number; they can say ‘soddit’ to the 90 quid and say ‘we’re charging 150 a skull’ (but that makes them look bad) or they can say ‘we’re charging 150 a skull but we’ll do it via the secondary market and Ticketmaster look bad
    f) they tell TM to put 35 tickets ;) on general sale and lamp the rest of them on over
    g) people lose their minds over Ticketmaster price gouging and Bono and the lads have a good laugh…

    Fact is that Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation who own/co-own MCD; you can’t buy any tickets elsewhere apart from other Livenation owned brokers so Ticketmaster don’t even care about the bad press, you STILL have to use them. There’s no competition.

    1. Fact Checker

      U2 should just insist on a sealed-bid Dutch auction.

      Here’s how it works:

      1) Two week window for purchases
      2) You bid the most you are prepared to pay for a U2 ticket, it comes off your credit card immediately
      3) If there are n tickets everyone gets a ticket down to the nth-highest bidder
      4) Everyone else gets a refund

      The band maximises revenue. Everyone else pays no more than what they feel the ticket is worth to them.

      The technology for this is pretty straightforward.

      1. ivan

        I hate it, but you’re right. The Rolling Stones are piloting this in the crudest sense by offering tickets at face-value-silly-money and when that demand has dried up, they have a price drop.

        1. Fact Checker

          Aside from the half century 1960-2010, musicians for the course of human history have made their living from live performance.

          I for one do not begrudge them looking to be paid as much as the market will bear.

  10. Increasing Displacement

    These problems would not occur if people didnt buy off touts.
    Same as scroats nickin stuff and people complaining about theft.
    They wouldn’t nick the stuff if there wasnt a market.

    1. Fact Checker

      Except a tout is BUYING something from one person and SELLING it to someone else.

      This is conceptually quite different to theft.

  13. Daisy Chainsaw

    I’m just surprised that U2 is actively going the “nostalgia route”. They’re hardly Spandau Ballet, and let’s face it, the majority of tours are a Greatest Hits package with a couple of new songs thrown in for good measure.

    Maybe their tax bills caught up with them.

    1. Increasing Displacement

      I’d say its more an attention thing for Bono. He’s not getting enough of it maybe.
      No cause that he sees fit to mouth off about at the moment.

  14. Martco

    c’mere

    anyone remember a tribute band called “The Joshua Trio” who’d disappear off stage only to reappear on in different gear as “Tony St James and the Las Vegas Sounds”??

    are they still on the go atall?

    feckin deadly they were

    1. Daisy Chainsaw

      Paul (Wonderful) Woodfull wrote I, Keano with fellow Trio members Arthur Matthews (who has also dabbled in writing with Graham Linehan. Did something with priests in it!) and his brother Kieran.

    2. Cian

      Didn’t they do REM tribute songs too? but changed some of the lyrics… I saw them in Whelans back in ninety-something. I remember them bringing a toilet on stage as a prop for one song, but can’t for the life of me remember what it was.

        2. Otis Blue

          Another was Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly.

          Notable for the lachrymose famine anthem ‘ The Potatoes Aren’t Looking the Best’

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