Paul McCartney - Back In The World

Tickets sales in Germany / Ticket-Verkäufe in Deutschland

The ticket-sales for the concerts wasn´t that good as the promoters told us. The tickets went on sale on the internet one week before the official beginning of the sales. Everyone would like to have good tickets for the show and so a lot of fans already ordered the tickets. The only problem was that you only could choose the pricecategory and that you didn´t know exatly where to sit. „You will get best seats available“ stood there on the official internet page (www.paulmccartney2003.de).... Because we ordered the tickets ca. half an hour after the site was available whe thought that we definetely should get good seats. Also the tickets cost until 20 Euro more than the offical price plus postage. But we thought thats worth when you have good tickets. We had to wait more then two weeks and then the first tickets came. We were really disappointed. Best/highest price category YES good seats NO. We had seats on the complete opposite of the stage. But there was nothing we could do about it. So we thought: „Hey it´s a McCartney concert. We will definetely have a good time...“.

Officially the tickets for both cologne concerts were sold out within 3 hours. So we thought OK, not good seats but we have tickets. About 4 weeks before the shows suddenly again 2000 tickets best price category for the first cologne concert were available. We thought that this was only a bad joke but you could order these seats through a big german newspaper. One week before the concert suddenly another 500 tickets best category were available. The press notice said that these tickets were given back from the musicians!!! Yes, I believe that..... Since easter weekend again there were some tickets on stock for some concerts and still tickets was available for the second cologne concert and that with a 25% discount. For both cologne concerts were still some tickets available at the box office that evening. 2nd  Cologne concert with a discout from 50%!!!

For the concert in Hannover also some tickets were available at the box office. Also there was a few free seats at the concert as on the 2nd cologne concert.

The second concert in Munich and the concert in Hamburg isn´t still sold out. At the moment you can order them with a discount of 20% over the internet.

The concert who was attended in Gelsenkirchen „Schalke Arena“ has moved to Oberhausen because of „technical reasons“!! The only reason was that for the venue in Gelsenkirchen until the easter weekend max. 1/5 of the seats had been sold. Means ca. 10.000 tickets from ca. 55.000 available! The new venue has a capacity from about 12.000 or 14.000 people. Now the concert is nearly sold out.

I don´t want to be misunderstood. I´m not really happy with these facts. I would have love it to see that really all events were sold out in short time. It seems that the promoters havn´t estimated the need for tickets correctly. It seems that they have seen the huge success in the US and they thought that they could do a lot of concerts with max. prices and the people will snatch these out of their hands. I mean it´s fantastic that Paul is that often here in Germany but you have to wonder why other countries hadn´t that luck. Specific France who only had one concert in Paris. Another thing is that they did the main part of the conerts here in germany in the middle of the country.  2 concerts in cologne and the additional concert now in Oberhausen which lies about 100km away from cologne. Then we have 2 concerts in the south (Munich) and one concert in the north (Hamburg). Also there are no concerts in east germany. Even not in Berlin.

The ticket prices are very high here in germany. OK, we shouldn´t say anything when I think of the prices have been paid in the US, but I think that the total amount of one ticket is much to high. I paid for one ticket „best category“ 115 and 130 Euro. I have had paid for a ticket 1993 in Dortmund ca. 40 Euro. OK, everthing cost more today but not that much more. A lot of real fans couldn´t afford these tickets and other fans could only see one concert even if they would have love it to see more then one show. Also I think that a lot of „normal people“ would gladly have seen Paul but they thought that the price is too high and so they stayed home.

I think that are the main reasons why the tour isn´t completely sold out here in germany. That has nothing to do with Paul by himself. The concerts until now were really great and I had a lot of fun and so did a lot of other people. I´m lucky to see him again next week and I also think of driving to munich. Tickets are available officially as I wrote above and a lot of tickets are sold for half price or less at EBAY.....

Markus den Boer