6 Garth Brooks concerts scheduled in 4 days in Saskatoon
High demand led to more and more shows says executive director
What started off as a normal Friday morning for Scott Ford and the staff at Saskatoon's SaskTel Centre quickly turned into an unforgettable few hours.
Tickets to country music superstar Garth Brooks' concert for June 11 went on sale at 10 a.m. CST. The demand was high so a second show was quickly added. Then another. And another.
Certainly there was so much demand there that the Garth Brooks camp and their team said, 'we've got to give these guys more shows.'- Scott Ford, Executive Director of SaskTel Centre
By 11 a.m. CST, Brooks was scheduled to play six times in four days at SaskTel Centre.
"When an artist announces one show and then rolls into five additional shows; to put six on sale it was extremely exciting and just a great day overall," said Ford.
The decision to add five additional shows in Saskatoon was made by Brooks' ticket team. It was closely monitoring traffic on Ticketmaster and Brooks' website to gauge how many more shows would meet the demand.
Ford explained his office was told in advance that a second or possibly third show could be added in Saskatoon. Six? Not so much.
"Certainly there was so much demand there that the Garth Brooks camp and their team said 'we've got to give these guys more shows. They've got so many fans who want to see Garth and Trisha Yearwood perform.' So they kept adding additional shows."
The demand reached record levels for Saskatchewan. With more than 86,000 tickets sold, Brooks broke the previous ticket sales record for the province which was held by the Rolling Stones when they played two shows in October 2006 at Regina's Mosaic Stadium. Those two concerts sold 80,127 tickets.
What to do with all those people
What makes these series of shows unique is on Friday and Saturday night, Brooks will perform twice. Once at 7 p.m. CST and again at 10:30 p.m. CST.
That means getting thousands of people in and out of the arena and parking lot in a very timely manner.
Frequent visitors to SaskTel Centre know that leaving the arena after an event can be frustrating, but Ford is confident they can pull it off.
"The last two home games for the Saskatchewan Rush lacrosse team have had around 15,000 fans and we can clear the parking lot in approximately 40 minutes. Our parking and traffic teams are getting very skilled at doing it."
Tickets for all six shows are still available. They are priced at $79.98 with an eight-ticket limit and are available here.
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