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Edmania: Sheeran breaks records across Europe with new onsales

After last Thursday's huge onsale, leg 12 of Ed Sheeran's already history-making ÷ tour is smashing yet more records from Austria to Iceland

By Jon Chapple on 02 Oct 2018

Edmania is sweeping Europe once more

‘Edmania’ is sweeping Europe once more


image © Mark Surridge/Atlantic Records

Not content with having almost certainly the biggest tour of this year, the Ed Sheeran touring colossus is extending its record-breaking ÷ run deeper into 2019, having already smashed touring records across Europe ahead of a string of open-air dates next summer.

The 12th leg of the ÷ (pronounced ‘Divide’) tour sees Sheeran play a run of European festivals, parks, stadia and other open-air venues, touching down at Groupama Stadium (59,186-cap.) in Lyons on 24 May 2019 and wrapping up with three nights in Chantry Park in Ipswich, in Sheeran’s home county of Suffolk, on 23–25 August.

The tour has done gangbuster business since starting back in March 2017, with the British singer-songwriter’s lasting popularity – dubbed ‘Edmania’ by European promoter FKP Scorpio – driving huge numbers across all legs, including 1m tickets sold in Australasia (leg seven), 750,000 tickets across FKP shows in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Poland (leg nine) and, currently, a US$300m-and-counting-grossing US stadium run (leg ten).

The tour was also the highest grossing in the world in the first half of 2018, shifting more than 2.6m tickets – more than double that of runner-up Disney on Ice.

Tickets for leg 12 went on sale last week, and promoters across Europe are already reporting a massive response to the new run of shows, believed to be the last of the tour.

“‘Edmania’ has no end,” enthuses Germany’s FKP Scorpio, which has in five days sold more than 200,000 tickets for just four shows: Hockenheimring on 22 and 23 June and Hanover Fairground on 2 and 3 August.

9% – or nearly one in ten – Icelanders are going to the Reykjavik show

The company is additionally co-promoting two dates in Prague (Letňany airport, 7 and 8 July), one in Riga (Lucavsala Park, 12 July) and two in Helsinki (Malmi airport, 23 and 24 July), in partnership with Charmenko, L Tips Agency and Fullsteam, respectively, all of which it says are seeing “great local demand” for tickets.

The fan response has been similarly overwhelming in France, where promoter Live Nation added a second Groupama Stadium date after the first sold out in minutes on Thursday morning, and at home, where Kilimanjaro Live and DHP Family added a third Ipswich show after the 23 and 24 August dates sold out in under half an hour.

In Romania, 25,000 tickets to Sheeran’s 3 July show at Bucharest’s National Arena stadium sold in record time; in Spain the figure is 70,000 in three hours, for two Live Nation-promoted shows in Barcelona and Madrid on 7 and 11 June, respectively.

In Austria, meanwhile, the onsale for a 28 June Wörthersee Stadium (30,000-cap.) set a new record by selling out in just three minutes; a second date announced for the following night took half an hour. Sheeran has now sold 180,000 tickets in Austria in the last 12 months alone, following two huge concerts at Happel Stadium in Vienna last month, reports Österreich.

But perhaps nowhere more is Sheeran’s status as the world’s premier live draw more apparent than in tiny Iceland, where promoters Sena Live and AEG Presents sold a record-breaking 30,000+ tickets in the space of two hours for his 10 August date at Laugardalsvöllur in Reykjavik. At last count, the population of Iceland was 334,252, meaning around 9% – or nearly one in ten – Icelanders are going to the show. If the same was true in, say, the US, you’d need a stadium that could fit 29m people…

 


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