Call it Arcade Ire - Irish fans of the Canadian indie band Arcade Fire lit up the internet yesterday after missing out on tickets for the band's concert at the Phoenix Park later this year.
All tickets for the October 24th gig at the Big Top sold out within two minutes of going on sale at 9am yesterday, according to fans. The exact number of tickets available is unclear, although it is believed to be between 8,000 and 10,000.
Many buyers who logged on to Ticketmaster at 9am missed out on the €50 tickets, which were limited to four per person after a similar incident earlier this year, when the band's two concerts at the Olympia Theatre in March sold out within seconds.
Fans accused touts of buying up the tickets and selling them on sites like eBay. Ticketmaster's new tactics did not stop all the touts. Arcade Fire tickets popped up throughout the day on eBay and similar sites. One site was selling tickets for €110 last night.
"I am So. Freaking. Angry. With both Arcade Fire and Ticketmaster," wrote one blogger on ireland.com.
One fan tried to get tickets the old-fashioned way, by queuing at Merchants Quay. He was 11th in line. "You'd think how could I not get tickets . . . Well, I didn't," he wrote, before launching into a diatribe about the slow counter service.