What a MISSION!
Mission pre-sale tickets snapped up
The Rocket Man’s Mission Concert in 2020 has lift off with 23,500 Elton John tickets sold in just over an hour. Scalpers are already offering tickets online for inflated prices.
Thousands of Elton John fans had their dreams of seeing him perform in Napier snuffed out like a candle in the wind, as Mission Estate’s website struggled to cope with demand. About 23,500 pre-sale tickets to the pop superstar’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour show sold out in just over an hour, a Mission spokesman said. Pre-sale tickets for the February 8 show went live online on the Mission’s website at 9am Tuesday, with users reporting that more than 37,000 were in the queue. The winery venue’s capacity is roughly 26,000. By Tuesday afternoon, controversial ticket re-seller Viagogo already had more than 500 tickets available for the Napier concert, starting at about $350 a ticket. Another 2000 were for sale on Viagogo for Elton John’s Auckland and Dunedin shows. Many fans were left out in the cold by Mission’s system, claiming they were in the process of purchasing tickets before being pushed to the back of the queue. Mission Estate CEO Peter Holley said no formal complaints had been laid with it as at 11am yesterday but he would “have our IT department look into it”. Mission Estate later released a statement via their website congratulating fans who secured tickets and apologising to those who had missed out. “Due to unprecedented demand for the Elton John Mission Concert FEB 8 2020 event, many thousands of people missed out on tickets to the date. The demand for tickets was so overwhelming there were thousands more people in queue to secure tickets than there were tickets to sell. We apologise to those who waited in the queue and missed out.” One fan, Jacqui Robinson, found the system to be “extremely poor” for a concert of such significance to so many. “Mission Estate really needs to clean up their act when it comes to these things if they want to be able to host big acts like this.” Robinson logged on 15 minutes before the tickets went on sale, having already signed up as a member and was listed 1083 in the queue. But as she went on to the next stage to pay for tickets the system failed multiple times. “As I went to go pay for my tickets the page kept on saying error wait till we redirect you, then on the third time it told me I was number 27,000 in the queue. It was just annoying to have to wait that long and then get pushed to the back,” said Robinson. Some fans turned to Twitter trying to get a second concert organised for those who missed out. Mission’s website on Tuesday afternoon still had a place where fans could register their interest for the show, fuelling speculation about the potential for a second show. But for Robinson, missing out on Tuesday was a lost opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime experience. “My husband and I saw him perform at Wembley in 1992 which was an amazing experience and being British expats we wanted to see him one last time on his big farewell tour, but now we probably won’t be.”