By Chesney Hearst, Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Official ticket sales in Brazil for the seven day 2013 Rock in Rio music festival opened on the morning of Thursday, April 4th, and sold out before the afternoon had begun. The Ingresso.com website began selling the tickets at 10AM and initially shut down briefly due to an overload of requests.
Around noon a spokesperson for the festival released a statement saying; “[…] the site became overloaded due to 400,000 people simultaneously trying to buy tickets. Right now, the sales are stabilized with approximately 1,200 tickets sold per minute.”
Tickets for the day of September 20th – featuring Bon Jovi, Nickelback, Matchbox Twenty and Frejat – were the first to sell out. Next to go were tickets for the opening day of the festival, September 13th, selling out an hour later at at around 12:30 PM.
“After four hours and four minutes on April 4th, [Brazil] bought all the Rock in Rio tickets. Thanks, guys! The City of Rock is yours,” announced the Rock in Rio Facebook page at around 1PM on Thursday afternoon.
Customers in Brazil were allowed to buy four tickets per CPF (equivalent to a Social Security number) for each day of the festival with full price tickets costing R$260 and half price student tickets available for R$130. Customers of Itaú bank could purchase their tickets for a fifteen percent discount, at R$221.
The highly anticipated seven day musical festival will take place on September 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 20th, 21st and 22nd at Barra da Tijuca’s Cidade do Rock/Parque dos Atletas (City of Rock/Athlete’s Park). Confirmed acts include; Beyoncé, Muse, Florence and the Machine, Justin Timberlake, Metallica, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Alicia Keys, John Mayer, David Guetta, Ivete Sangalo and Iron Maiden.
At the time of this report customers currently outside of Brazil can still purchase tickets for the festival here.
Read more (in Portuguese).
* The Rio Times Daily Updates feature is offered to help keep you up-to-date with important news as it happens.
Read More from The Rio Times