Croatian artist aims for world’s largest ticketed gig

Croatian artist Marko Perković Thompson could break the world record for the largest paid-for concert with his upcoming show in Zagbreb.

The 58-year-old sold 281,774 tickets to his 5 July show at Zagreb Hippodrome, a horse racing track in the Croatian capital spanning 47 hectares.

Tickets went on sale last Friday (28 March) and sold out in less than 24 hours, with 130,000 flying off the shelf in less than six hours.

The concert will reportedly be the largest paid-for concert in history, breaking the record previously held by Italian musician Vasco Rossi, who sold 225,173 tickets for his concert in Modena at the Enzo Ferrari Park in 2017.

Due to the unprecedented demand, Thompson and his team are currently “in talks” with the city of Zagreb to organise a second concert at the Hippodrome on 6 July.

The concert was ticketed by Entrio, a local player founded in 2011 and the second biggest ticketing company in Croatia, according to the International Ticketing Report 2024.

“Entrio is extremely proud of its entire engineering and operations team for handling one of the most complex ticket sales for a single concert in the world”

In a statement, the firm said it was “extremely proud of its entire engineering and operations team for handling one of the most complex ticket sales for a single concert in the world”.

“The Entrio engineering team worked for almost 30 hours straight, during an unprecedented rush of fans to buy tickets, to optimise the server infrastructure, solve a number of technical challenges, maximize sales, eliminate three powerful hacker attacks and ensure that hundreds of other events that we simultaneously sold in three markets were running successfully,” it said.

“All of the above caused occasional difficulties in accessing the system and queues at points of sale, which is entirely expected given the scale of this sale. The pressure on sales lasted all night, hundreds of tickets were sold every minute of the night, and at the quietest moment around 4:30 am there were still over 20,000 people in the virtual waiting room.

“At the same time, our customer support team received thousands of inquiries through various channels, which they continue to diligently respond to so that all of our customers’ questions are resolved as soon as possible.”

Zagreb Hippodrome – which is said to host an unlimited number of standing spectators – has previously hosted several mega concerts.

The Rolling Stones currently hold the record for the largest-ever concert at the venue, drawing 80,000 fans to their Bridges to Babylon show in 1998. This was the first major concert in independent Croatia, coming shortly after the peaceful reintegration of Eastern Slavonia.

Other notable concerts at the venue include Metallica in 2010 (over 30,000 fans), Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2012 (over 35,000), and Ed Sheeran’s 2024 show, which attracted 70,000 people.

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