THE company behind T in the Park has sold more than half a million tickets to concerts for the first time this summer.
Music fans appear to be bucking the recession and buying tickets to open air concerts, a pattern that has also been seen last month in other areas of culture with a successful Festival period, with record ticket figures for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and healthy returns for the Edinburgh International Festival.
DF Concerts and Events, based in Glasgow, organised several events which sold more than 450,000 tickets plus tickets for 163 separate gigs through the summer months.
The Stone Roses concert in June sold 50,000 tickets, and Robbie Williams in the same month sold 110,000 tickets over two nights, the new Summer Sessions in Glasgow sold 100,000 tickets over three nights, and T in the Park sold 250,000 tickets. Some 60% of the tickets sold in the Summer Sessions concerts, which featured rapper Eminem and rock band Kings of Leon, were sold to music fans from outside Glasgow.
Geoff Ellis, chief executive of DF Concerts, said: "Half a million over summer, while we are still in a deep recession, that is not bad. I think it shows that if there is an event, then people will want to go, and I think music is something that people will pay the money for. I think in Scotland people ask: is this good value for me? The evidence seems to say that people think live music is good value."
He added of the Summer Sessions: "They were good, the calibre of the acts was very strong, and with the first year of anything that is always the challenge.
"The site in Bellahouston Park worked really well, it is a natural bowl and with the line of trees looks good.
"We are already thinking about next year, although we are planning T in the Park first."
Some local residents in Bellahouston complained about public drunkenness at the Summer Session gigs and there were noise complaints following the Eminem concert which could be heard up to eight miles away.
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