Michael Jackson is still remarkably popular in London. In the same freakish way, we assume, that the Elephant Man would still be popular in London.
Jackson scheduled a series of “final” concerts in the English capital. Demented Englishmen snapped them up so quickly that more concerts were hastily scheduled. Fifty of them. And they sold out. 750,000 tickets in all.
That’s an average of 40,000 tickets an hour. More than 650 per minute. More than 11 per second. Fans from Japan, Belgium and Dubai lined up to to buy the tickets. One lunatic stood in line for two days. According to Radio & Records:
Chris Edmonds, managing director of Ticketmaster UK, said, “We often talk about unprecedented demand, but this week we have witnessed a live entertainment phenomenon. We have seen a truly amazing level of interest and demand for tickets from fans from across the world for the Michael Jackson shows at The O2 over the last 3 days. The success of the general on-sale today has led to Michael Jackson and AEG Live adding even more dates, taking the total amount of performances to 50. Today, we saw well over 250,000 fans hitting the Ticketmaster site at 7 a.m. for the general sale tickets. This was undoubtedly the busiest demand for tickets for an event which we have ever experienced.”
Jackson is expected to perform his hit song “Black or White,” except this time he will perform both roles.
Source: Radio and Records
