COMPUTICKET sold more than 50 000 tickets for the Justin Bieber concert in less than an hour for the Cape Town and Joburg shows on Tuesday.
Computicket’s upgraded system allowed Justin Bieber fans to break ticket sale records after 23 000 tickets were sold in Cape Town and 6 000 were sold in Joburg within 30 minutes.
The system has the capacity to process 6 000 online transactions every minute. The Golden Circle tickets for both venues sold out in less than two minutes and general standing tickets in under five minutes.
Big Concerts allocated an additional 6 700 tickets to Joburg and 1 000 to Cape Town after they sold out much faster than the concert organisers had anticipated. The tickets ranged from R350 to R750.
Bieber, who rose to fame after becoming a YouTube sensation, will be touring and performing in SA for the first time in May next year.
The singer became the first artist to have seven songs from a debut album appear on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2009.
The tickets, which went on sale at 9am yesterday, sold out in record times. Even those who had camped out outside the Computicket offices at the V&A Waterfront were left disappointed and empty-handed.
Nabeela Francis, 15, camped outside the Computicket offices in the Victoria Wharf, in the hope of getting her hands on a Golden Circle ticket, only to find out that they were already sold out online.
A number of people resorted to reselling tickets for exaggerated amounts on classifieds website Gumtree.
Speaking on behalf of Computicket, Karen Lowe said that it was unethical for people to resell their tickets in this way. “The law doesn’t prevent it from happening and we cannot guarantee that the tickets being sold here are secure or not, but if a person would like to resell their ticket they should rather bring it back to us (Computicket)” Lowe said.
The 18-year-old Canadian singer will be performing for two nights. He will be in Cape Town on May 8 at the Cape Town Stadium and his second and final concert will be in Joburg at the FNB Stadium on May 12.
Computicket director Gerhard Hayes said they were glad to see how well their new system was working. “We are thrilled that our recent upgrade to the system has proven so successful and that we are able to offer our consumers speedier booking.” - Cape Argus