Coldplay and Cho Seong-jin tickets sold out in seconds

It was one intense and short “Ticketing war” among music fans who were hunting for tickets to concerts of British band Coldplay and Korean pianist Cho Seong-jin.

Coldplay scheduled a concert in Seoul on April 15 next year and will meet Korean fans for the first time. Coldplay has been named as one of the superstars Korean fans want to see along with U2 and Madonna. In the meantime, Cho plans to have two solo performance in Seoul from January 3 to 4 next year, which will be Cho’s first recital after winning the 2015 Chopin Competition.

With no doubt, it has been expected that many of fans will be left empty-handed as both tickets will obviously hard to get. Cho’s tickets were fist available to paid members of Lotte Concert Hall on Tuesday and additional tickets were sold to the general public on Wednesday. For Coldplay, tickets were fist sold to Hyundai card holders on Wednesday and will be sold to the general public on Thursday. As expected, tickets were snapped up instantly.

After Coldplay tickets were released, the website server was wrecked for more than 10 minutes due to overwhelming demands. Surprisingly, 22,000 tickets were sold out in just two minutes on Wednesday. According to Hyundai Card, as much as 550,000 users logged in at the same time on websites of ticket retailers such as Interpark and Yes 24. This is seven times greater than the figure recorded for Paul McCartney’s first concert in Korea last year.

Cho’s recital tickets were sold out in nine minutes on Wednesday after a total of 800 tickets were released, 400 tickets each for two concerts. A total of 3,000 tickets, 1,500 tickets each for two days, were sold out in one hour on Tuesday. The number of users logged in online at the same time stood at 3,000. In order to buy tickets released in advance to Lotte Concert Hall members, 1,195 people purchased the membership.

Several stories have been reported about people taking a day off and skipping lunch meal to buy tickets. “I took a day off to be relaxed and went to an Internet café to buy ticket online as I expected the demand would be explosive,” said Park Jeong-jin an avid fan of Coldplay.

Tickets of Coldplay and Cho are being resold online at a price as high as five times greater the original price.

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