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Home / Hawkes Bay Today

Sold out! Tickets for Elton John's second show in Napier gone in an hour

By Doug Laing and Blair Voorend
Hawkes Bay Today·
15 Feb, 2019 04:24 AM3 mins to read

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Elton John's two concerts could be one of Hawke's Bay's biggest ever events. Photo / Getty

Elton John's two concerts could be one of Hawke's Bay's biggest ever events. Photo / Getty

Elton John's second show in Napier has sold out just as fast as his first one.

The February 6 show had fully sold out in an hour, with both Gold Reserved and General Admission gone, with many punters again left out in the cold due to the huge demand.

Many fans were faced with more than an hour waiting in the Mission's Queue-it system within 60 seconds of them going on sale to Concert Club members at noon today.

Mission Estate CEO Peter Holley was far more satisfied with how the system ran today compared to Tuesday.

"The software ran as we expected it today, we had no glitchs or faults, it was just the simple fact that we weren't able to supply for the high demand of people wanting to attend," Holley said.

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"Phenomenal" demand for tickets to his February 8 concert next year had left thousands of people on "Mission Concert Wait List". Demand was so high that some of those didn't even get tickets. A second Auckland show was announced on Friday evening.

Sir Elton will become only the second star to do two Mission Concerts in Napier.

Holley stressed: "It's the artist's decision that makes them available. It's effectively the case that Elton John has agreed to this."

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The only star to appear twice at the Mission since Dame Kiri Te Kanawa wowed the first crowd in 1993 is rock and roller Rod Stewart, who first appeared in 2005 and returned in 2014 for a show in front of the record crowd of about 26,000.

An-online queue stretching to 50,000 tried to buy tickets to the first show, with Mission admitting 4 per cent of people trying to buy tickets were bumped to the back of the queue because of a fault caused by overloading.

This time around Mission removed the mechanism showing how many people were online in the queue.

Mission's two shows are part of a now five-show New Zealand leg of the Farewell Yellow Brick Road world tour of more than 300 concerts in 18 months, which started last September.

Holley said that settling around 25,000 people at each show with a combined total of 50,000 would put the Mission's event in the realms of the biggest concerts held anywhere in the world.

The biggest crowd for any other event in Hawke's Bay is thought to have been for a Hawke's Bay Ranfurly Shield era rugby match against Wellington in the 1960s.

"This is certainly an exciting time," he said. "We've never had two concerts back-to-back like this before. To be overwhelmed by the initial demand and leave so many disappointed...We thought if we could we'd like to offer a second opportunity."

Turning 72 next month, Elton John is currently performing mainly indoor concerts in the dead of a US winter, with 18, some back-to-back, over the next month before heading to Europe in May.

Elton and his band were to have had a four-day break before the Mission concert but will now have a much more hectic schedule.

Expanding the tours is nothing new for the British superstar, promoters on Wednesday announcing nine additions to an Australian schedule now comprising 24 concerts in 32 days from November 30 to February 1.

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