BTS win Ticketmaster’s ticket of the year 2018

World-conquering Korean boy band BTS has been crowned ticket of the year 2018 by Ticketmaster, which polled fans globally from its database of 200m people to discover the most popular live events of 2018.

The K-pop phenomenon recently became the first Korean act to surpass a billion streams on Apple Music, while their Burn the Stage movie sold more than 1.4m tickets, toppling a record previously held by One Direction.

Ed Sheeran’s mammoth ÷ tour was second, with long-running Dutch festival Pinkpop taking third.

In the UK, Scottish comedian Kevin Bridges becomes the first comedian to take ticket of the year, for last month’s shows at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, with Pink’s Beautiful Trauma and the Spice Girls’ Spice World named the most anticipated UK tours of 2019.

Hamilton, meanwhile, is Britain’s favourite theatre show.

“It’s been a while since the result of a vote has made me happy”

Bridges comments: “Thank you to everybody who came out to see me live this year, and a very special thank you to those who went as far as voting for me as their favourite show of the year.

“It’s been a while since the result of a vote has made me happy. You have restored my faith in democracy. Thank you all and see you another time.”

“What an honour from my beautiful UK fans,” says Pink. “A huge thank you to everyone that voted for the Beautiful Trauma tour as the Ticketmaster most anticipated event 2019. It’s been nearly five years since I’ve toured the UK – I can’t wait to get back and party with all of you.”

The winners in full are:

UK ticket of the year 2018
1. Kevin Bridges – The SSE Hydro
2. Hamilton – Victoria Palace Theatre
3. Ed Sheeran – Wembley Stadium
4. Taylor Swift – Wembley Stadium
5. Ed Sheeran – Hampden Park National Stadium

UK most anticipated events 2019
1. Pink
2. Spice Girls
3. Muse
4. Fleetwood Mac
5. Take That

Global ticket of the year 2018
1. BTS
2. Ed Sheeran
3. Pinkpop

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