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O2 to be most popular venue in world
Amar Singh, Evening Standard16.11.07
The O2 arena is on course to be named the world's most popular venue this year with ticket sales set to exceed one million.
The 20,000-seater auditorium in the former Millennium Dome will overtake New York's Madison Square Gardens as the venue to have sold the most tickets in the year - despite only opening in June.
The milestone will cap a remarkably successful start for the Greenwich complex now run by US entertainment giant AEG.
It comes as the O2 revealed that U2 will host "multiple" nights there next year. New figures released by concert database Pollstar shows the arena's three-month ticket sale of 601,056 is beaten only by those of Madison Square Gardens, Manchester Evening News Arena and Wembley Arena - sold over nine months. With several big name in the run-up to Christmas, the O2 is predicted to comfortably overtake all three.
The arena opened in June with Bon Jovi and has hosted some of the world's biggest names including Prince, the Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand.
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It's a good thing that Blair and Mandelson's "white elephant" has finally been transformed into a watering hole - instead of the graveyard it became for seven years. (Not forgetting, of course, it was Heseltine and the Tories who lald the foundations for the concept, originally. And God knows how many millions of pounds were squandered on it, in the interim 'empty' years, when it was less use than an out-of-order toilet, and far more expensive to keep running.) But whatever shortcomings the interior may have, and there are many - though not in the arena itself, which is excellent - at least it is now in use and a profitable item. What a shame it took an American company to justify its viability after all of New Labour's waffle, back in 2000.
- Dougal, Greenwich, United Kingdom
At a great cost to the taxpayer.
- Bill, London
The Dome's time has finally come.
- Darren, London
