Adele’s Concert Tickets Already Sold Out — Within Minutes
If you were hoping to score Adele concert tickets for Christmas, then you are out of luck. That’s because thousands of tickets were sold out within minutes in North America.
An estimated 10 million — or more — people either went online or stood in line last week for the chance to see Adele perform in concert, according to Entertainment Weekly. A total of 440,000 tickets were available for Adele’s 2016 North American Tour, which is a 56-date tour in the U.S. and Mexico.
Some of Adele’s fans took to social media to say that the tickets were sold out within minutes. Other fans also said that it took them about 45 minutes or more to buy tickets online. But most of those fans walked away with no tickets.
Meanwhile, ticket resale websites like StubHub and eBay posted Adele concert tickets just minutes after they sold out. The asking prices ranged from $300 for upper deck seating to as much as $10,000 for stage seating. The official ticket prices ranged from $40 to $750.
Adele’s team tried to put a stop to those pesky online scalpers. The “Hello” singer teamed up with Songkick, a website that specializes in ticket sales through artists’ official websites and fan clubs. It also prevents tickets from ending up in the hands of scalpers. Songkick sold 235,000 tickets to Adele’s concert through its website. By tracking the customers who placed orders on their website, the company claims that they blocked 53,000 sales from likely scalpers when her European dates went on sale.
“By selling the highest number of tickets we were able through our own channels, and working with Songkick and their technology, we have done everything within our power to get as many tickets as possible in the hands of the fans who have waited for years to see her live,” Adele’s manager, Jonathan Dickins, told the New York Times.
But even that website had technical issues at the time of the sale.
Well Adele, hello from the outside pic.twitter.com/fSOs67SJIB
— South Alabama Belle (@SAlabamabelles) December 17, 2015
The North American portion of Adele’s tour begins in St. Paul, Minnesota, in July and ends in Mexico City on November 15. You can see the full list of dates here, even though you can’t purchase tickets.
Tickets for the singer’s U.K. and European leg of the tour also sold out within minutes that they went on sale earlier this month. Ticketmaster’s President Jared Smith told Billboard that even though there was heavy traffic, their website “did not crash and performed very well, in spite of truly unprecedented demand.”
“I know it must be frustrating to read or see in the news that we crashed during Adele’s onsale and that fans are upset with [Ticketmaster] because they couldn’t get tickets.”
Smith also provided some excuses for as to why the website was so slow. It’s quite possible that Adele’s power could have broken the internet.
“Unfortunately, when there is such an exceptional artist with unprecedented demand against short supply, there are inevitably going to be disappointed fans.”
If you weren’t able to score Adele concert tickets, maybe you can watch a rebroadcast of her special during Christmas break. Last week, Adele Live in New York City, was viewed by 11.2 million people, making it NBC’s most-watched concert special since the Cher Farewell Tour, which raked in 16 million viewers back in 2003. According to Billboard, the special is now available for streaming online. It includes performances of Adele’s hit songs like “Rolling In The Deep,” “Set Fire To the Rain,” and “Skyfall,” among many others.
Were you able to purchase Adele concert tickets? Did you purchase them online or the old-fashioned way? Sound off below in the comments section.
[Photo by Sascha Steinbach/Getty Images]
