Desert Trip mega-concert tickets sell out in 5 hours

Tickets for Desert Trip, the rock mega-concert in October in Indio featuring Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, the Who, Neil Young and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, sold out in five hours Monday, concert organizers said Tuesday.

Orders came in from around the globe, said Paul Tollett, head of Goldenvoice, the concert promoter that organized the Oct. 7-9 and Oct. 14-16 shows. Interest in the event, he said, has been “unprecedented. ... There were over 400,000 people trying to place orders,” he told The Times.

Sales were capped at “a little bit more than 75,000,” he said, a figure similar to what Goldenvoice does for the annual Stagecoach Country Music Festival on the same Empire Polo Club site. For the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, attendance has been expanded in recent years to 99,000 per day over a six-day run.

Tickets for Desert Trip started at $199 for a single-day admission and ran up to $1,599 for reserved-seating three-day passes for either weekend, with a variety of VIP options pushing prices above $3,000.

Shortly before tickets for the Oct. 7-9 weekend went on sale, Goldenvoice announced that all the performers would return for a second weekend.

The Times fielded complaints from a few would-be concert-goers who didn’t get tickets.

“My wife and I were both on laptops, with windows open for both weekends,” West Hills resident Richard Guardian wrote in an email on Tuesday. “The first one barely crawled, the second weekend was just above snail pace.

“On Facebook I monitored comments from people that were all over the map, but most very negative and complaining, and identifying seats already on resale sites. After about three hours a friend of mine got on, but she wanted [general admission], so wasn’t going to buy.

“So the bad news, no tickets. The good news, we saved money.”

Tollett said Tuesday that overall the sale ran smoothly, and he reported no major glitches with the event’s website.

“It seemed to go well for all the orders that needed to be processed,” Tollett said. “So many people didn’t get tickets. That’s a bummer.”

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