Dublin and Mayo fans face a fraught week ahead, with ticket demand for next Saturday's All-Ireland semi-final replay already outstripping that of the sold-out drawn game.
Within 24 hours of the final whistle in Croke Park on Sunday there had been over 73,000 attempts to purchase tickets for the replay online. Such was the demand that the website of the GAA’s official ticketing partner, tickets.ie, crashed for a time yesterday.
This figure did not take into account those who bought tickets in outlets, including the GAA Ticket Office on Dorset Street in Dublin (above), where scores of people queued to snap up tickets from early yesterday morning.
An initial allocation of tickets, priced at €30 for the Davin Stand and €20 for Hill 16, sold out within minutes of going on sale on Sunday, while a further tranche sold out within 50 minutes of going on sale yesterday.
In a statement the GAA confirmed: “There will be no more public sales of tickets for Saturday’s GAA football All-Ireland senior championship semi-final replay between Dublin and Mayo, with the remaining tickets available through the competing counties.”
By yesterday evening a small number of tickets were being traded on online sites. While some ticket holders were seeking to swap tickets or sell them at face value, others were seeking between €70 and €75 per ticket, more than twice face value.
The replay will take place in Croke Park at 5pm next Saturday, the day before the All-Ireland hurling final between Kilkenny and Galway.
Demand for hotels in Dublin for Saturday night was high yesterday evening, with the average price of a room for two people in the capital on Booking.com coming in at almost €300.