Fans left waiting on a sunny day for Springsteen in Croker
Show began with pitch only half full
A DELAY in scanning tickets due to sunshine glare on phone screens was partly to blame for thousands of Bruce Springsteen fans missing the start of his sell-out Croke Park gig, organisers have said.
The Boss was finishing up his Irish tour in front of 80,000 people at GAA HQ, but the show was delayed by 15 minutes as fans struggled to get into the stadium in Dublin.
The 74-year-old from New Jersey had already played in Belfast, Kilkenny and Cork and was finishing his Irish tour in the capital on Sunday night, having promised to return.
Disgruntled fans took to social media to complain about hourlong queues, particularly on the red route into the stadium.
Concert promoter Peter Aiken apologised for the delays people attending the gig experienced.
He said there were delays to the scanning of the electronic tickets, with bright sunshine shining on phone screens significantly slowing down the process.
On a normal day, a ticket can be scanned in a couple of seconds but because of the glare, it took more than 15 seconds.
‘It was simply a case that the scanners couldn’t pick up the tickets as fast as they normally do,’ Mr Aiken told The Irish Times. ‘It was bad, and by the time Bruce Springsteen came on stage, around 70,000 tickets had been scanned with the remainder finished within 20 minutes of the start of the show.
‘It wasn’t good enough. While everyone was in within the first 20 minutes, nobody would want to miss any of it.’
An additional contributory factor was said to be a requirement for the tickets to be checked by stewards some distance from the stadium, adding to the queues along Clonliffe Road.
Mr Aiken said there had been a surge in numbers coming through the security cordons around the stadium between 6pm and the scheduled start time of 7pm.
He said that while some of the issues that led to the delays were beyond his staff ’s control, he accepted complete responsibility for what had gone wrong.
One attendee insisted that it wasn’t the fault of fans arriving late to the venue. ‘[I] was there at 5.45 and there was chaos on red route. Stewards were sending people in the wrong direction, then when they got there, they were told by another steward to go back. Gardaí having a go at stewards telling them to get it together,’ they said in a post on X/Twitter.
Footage shared online showed hundreds of fans still streaming into the ground, ten minutes after Springsteen took to the stage before 7.15pm, with the pitch half empty.
It was reported the queue stretched the whole way along Clonliffe Avenue to Drumcondra.
Another frustrated fan complained that ticket holders for Marathon gig: Left, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on the Croke Park stage the Cusack Stand and pitch had been forced down Foster’s Terrace where it took 45 minutes to get off the street into the laneway, and it then took another 45 minutes to get into the stadium.
Springsteen was well into his set before the stadium’s pitch looked full.
The stadium had opened at 5pm – two hours before the E Street Band were due onstage.
Prior to the gig, fans were told they would not to be allowed to queue early but also advised not to bring bags unless it was strictly necessary – and those without bags would be fast-tracked.
‘If you must bring a bag it needs to be less than A4 size. Bags under A4 size will be subject to a search which will result in queuing,’ they were advised.
Hollywood actor Brad Pitt and Boyzone singer Keith Duffy were among the famous faces in attendance for the show.
Duffy posted a selfie with Pitt to
‘No one wants to miss any of it’
‘Boss still knows how to rock’
his Instagram page and wrote: ‘What an unforgettable night with these lads at Croke Park watching the legendary Bruce Springsteen. ‘The Boss still knows how to rock a stadium!’ Springsteen first played Ireland at Slane in 1985 and Sunday night marked his 35th concert here. This latest tour of the country brings his Irish ticket sales to more than 1.2million in the last four decades. Springsteen and the E Street band delighted the 80,000 sell-out crowd on Sunday night with a three-hour set that included hits such as The River, Hungry Heart, Born to Run and Dancing In The Dark. He also gave an epic rendition of The Beatles’ Twist And Shout and a poignant cover of The Pogues’ A Rainy Night in Soho – a tribute to his old friend, the late Shane MacGowan. MacGowan’s widow Victoria Mary Clarke posted a photo with Springsteen to X/Twitter, saying he is ‘insanely brilliant as a musician’ but it is ‘his warmth and humanity and kindness that makes him a superstar’.