Furious fans left raging after shop runs out of Brooks tickets

Gardaí had to be called to a Limerick shop selling Garth Brooks concert tickets when furious fans raged after failing to secure tickets for his Croke Park gigs in July.

About 200 dedicated fans braved freezing temperatures for two nights camping outside Gleeson’s Sports Scene on Upper William St, but the majority were left “distraught” after the shop couldn’t cope with demand.

Steve Gleeson, owner, said its system for accessing Ticketmaster’s online ticket agent system was “slow” which left staff unable to access as many tickets as they would have wanted.

A community garda called for back-up officers after an angry crowd converged on the shop yesterday morning. After the shop had sold to around 49 buyers it told fans no more would be sold.

Kate Ronan, from Mill Rd, Corbally, Limerick, was in the queue for 50 hours. The 32-year-old had slept outside the shop for more than 48 hours in freezing conditions.

“I’m absolutely devastated. I was next in line. It’s a disgrace. The shop didn’t open the doors until a quarter to ten and the tickets went on sale at 9am online,” she said.

“They were only letting in two people at a time and it was very slow. When you went in you were waiting for the shop to print the tickets.

“The shop rang the gardaí because they knew there would be murder. The gardaí came and told fans to go away and that the tickets were all gone. There was people screaming and shouting.

“Two detectives arrived and they were in the store for about 10 minutes. The gardaí said they would bring paddywagons and arrest us if we didn’t leave. I left because I had to go to work.”

No arrests were made.

Mr Gleeson said: “I’m not feeling great to be honest with you.

“The whole system was slow. It was slow accessing the tickets. It was not up to its normal speed.

“Normally we get codes for seating [tickets] and we get codes for standing [tickets]. This time we only got a code for per day. So we had to manually go in per day and we could only print off six tickets at a time.”

He apologised to the fans who had waited for two days outside the shop.

“We’re very sorry and very sympathetic. We had four people working on the desk. We printed six tickets at a go — it was the fastest way. We never know [how many tickets we will get] until the day [of the sale]. If you’ve blips with broadband or your machine, it affects the result.”

Mr Gleeson said there was “no violence”.

“We had the gardaí notified anyway, because of the large crowd factor and because of the large amount of cash coming over the counter.

“We ran out of tickets and people got annoyed. They became disgruntled but there was no violence.

“We had been in contact with a community garda anyway. She was there and then a few more gardaí came along to talk to the crowds.”

He said Ticketmaster had been in contact with the shop and was “investigating why it was so slow“.

“By and large it has worked very smoothly but these ticket days for big concerts do interfere with the [day to day] running of the shop with the crowds outside. Normally our customers walk in and don’t have to queue. It’s not ideal,” said Mr Gleeson.