Madonna Foorumi - Finland

We introduce our brand new collaborator/correspondent from Finland, Pomme, with a detailed report of yesterday ticket sale for the Helsinki concert. Enjoy...

The sale of tickets to Madonna's Jätkäsaari concert started with a lot of publicity on Monday. A couple of TV channels followed some of the ticket offices and the people lined up before them in the morning. The sales started at 9.00 a.m and all the 80,000 tickets were sold or booked in three hours which also broke the record of the biggest amount of sold tickets to a single concert in Finland. However, additional tickets were released to the market again in the afternoon because some of the buyers had bought or booked more than six tickets. The released ones were quickly purchased again.

The sales was rather chaotic. Originally, the ticket office, Lippupiste, informed that also the kiosk chain R-kioski sells the tickets. However, just before 9.00 a.m., Lippupiste announced that R-kioski can only sell the tickets to the C-category. A- and B-categories are the ones in front of the stage, C is behind them. In addition, just when the sale started, R-kioski's connections to Lippupiste crashed. After a couple of minutes, Lippupiste's own system crashed too. The website did not work properly or at all. People also faced difficulties with the telephone sales: buyers were connected with other buyers in line and instead of talking to the salesperson they noticed that they were having a conversation with another one hoping to catch one of the much wanted tickets. Moreover, it might be possible that because of Madonna the gsm-network was overloaded on Monday morning.

Scalpers begun selling the first tickets online approximately at 9.15 a.m. Many of the scalpers have set the price very high ranging from several hundred euros to 2,500 euros per ticket (to give you the comparison, in Lippupiste the A-ticket cost 119€, B-ticket 109€ and the C-ticket 99€). This has evoked a lot of heated discussion among the fans that struggled with the sales or were left without a ticket. The situation is perceived unfair and some say that the amount of tickets one can buy should have been limited to 2 or 4 instead of 6. In addition, Lippupiste has warned people that the scaplers may not have the tickets at all since some have booked more tickets than was allowed. Some fans criticize the ticket office stating that Lippupiste messed up like they did two weeks ago with the sales of Bruce Springsteen's concert. Some speculate that the best tickets were sold before the official sales began. According to Lippupiste, the sales to the Madonna concert went in a record-breaking speed.

Some news articles already discuss the forthcoming arrangements the concert demands. Since the concert will be in harbour, the searoutes around and the airspace above the Jätkäsaari will be closed down if the Live Nation's applications go through. Moreover, some are secretly hoping that Madonna announces another concert in Finland. However, the organizer Risto Juvonen says that it's not very likely and that people shouldn't go ahead of things. Madonna's concert will be the biggest concert ever in Finland's history. The fans are thrilled that their dreams are finally coming true.


Pomme