Gigs & Festivals Jacksons v AEG Timeline

Fifty Jacko shows sell out

By | Published on Monday 16 March 2009

So, tickets for the fifty Jacko shows that have been confirmed as taking place at London’s The O2 later this year (and into next year) have now all sold out. After pre-sales to registered fans earlier last week, tickets went on proper sale on Friday and were all gone in a few hours. That means 750,000 tickets have been sold overall, which is rather a lot. I wonder how many people are going out of freakish curiosity?

Confirming the sell out, the boss of promoters AEG Live Randy Phillips told reporters: “The last week has been the most astonishing I have seen in my career in the entertainment business”.

Phillips has also confirmed that AEG have sort of fallen out with secondary ticketing firm Viagogo. With tickets for the Jacko shows up for grabs via various ticketing auction sites before they’d even gone on sale, AEG appointed Viagogo as its official resale service. But there were rumours that AEG/Viagogo’s relationship had quickly soured after the secondary ticketing firm allegedly offered the premium ticket packages it was also selling to other agents and touts in London. Phillips told reporters his secondary ticketing partner “did something really bad” and added that his company was taking action to ensure only tickets bought according to their agreement with Viagogo were valid.

While AEG are busy falling out with their secondary ticketing partners, they are presumably busy sucking up to their insurance company. While the original ten date O2 residency has been reportedly insured to the tune of £80 million, rumour has it no insurance company is willing to insure the full fifty date run, nervous it’ll all going to go horribly horribly wrong – not least because of Jacko’s state of health – and that they may be faced with paying out the £300 million that cancelling the full residency would probably cost. That said, Phillips insists Jackson is in good health, and says talks with AEG’s insurers are ongoing. He told reporters: “The insurance brokers sent doctors and they spend five hours with him, taking blood tests. He’s a vegetarian, he’s in great shape. The insurance cover, we are working on that now”.

Finally in Jacko news, HMV has reported a four-fold increase in sales of Jacko’s hits album ‘King Of Pop’ following all the hype that was created by the announcement of the singer’s O2 residency. Sales of ‘Thriller’, meanwhile, are up 80%.



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