14 DAY TRIAL // The greatest comeback in the history of music is upon us come summer 2009, as also is one of the most-anticipated and highly-mediated music events of the decade. Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” summer tour – his last series of gigs in the UK, as the singer himself said – has managed to sell out for all 50 dates in a matter of just a couple of hours, thus breaking all known musical records, a BBC report informs.
While for regular people it is more than enough to simply state that Michael’s 50 shows have sold out within hours, BBC has added up all the numbers and has come with several pretty impressive figures.
Aside from the speculation that the singer stands to make between $50 and 70 million off the entire tour, BBC informs that more than a million fans will have seen the King of Pop on stage by the time the 50th show ends. If this is not convincing enough, it also reports that all tickets have sold at a rate of 11 per second – faster than those for any other concert ever held.
Michael Jackson is reportedly “thrilled” by the fans’ wonderful response to his announcement, but organizers AEG Live are positively through the roof with joy. In fact, they have been so surprised by the magnitude of the event, that they’ve already asked the singer to add more dates to the show, a proposition Michael has not been completely opposed to, as a spokesperson confirms for the same media outlet.
“That wasn’t anticipated.” Randy Phillips of promoters AEG Live told BBC Radio 1 about the fans’ response. “We never thought ‘50 shows’ and frankly based on the queues on Ticketmaster, plus the 300,000 registrants we still haven’t issued codes to, we could spend two years here [at London’s O2 Arena]. Mike asked me how long he would be in the United Kingdom for and I told him, probably long enough to get a British passport. Michael’s already pretty much put together a list of the dancers he wants. Michael’s very engaged now.” Phillips added.
Ticketmaster was equally surprised by the heavy demand from fans looking to see the King of Pop on stage, as Director Chris Edmonds also shared for BBC. “We often talk about unprecedented demand, but this week we have witnessed a live entertainment phenomenon. This was undoubtedly the busiest demand for tickets for an event which we have ever experienced.” Edmonds explained.
As of now, the only tickets still available for Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” series of shows can be found on sites like eBay, retailing for anything between £170 and £10,000. Initial prices were up to £75.