Ed Sheeran promised Hot Press a couple of years ago before his Croke Park extravaganzas that he’d be back for a proper Irish tour and duly delivers with 2018 dates in the still being refurbished Pairc Ui Chaoimh, Cork (May 4 & 5): Boucher Playing Fields, Belfast (9); Pearse Stadium, Galway (12 & 13), and the Phoenix Park, Dublin (16 & 18).
Tickets go on sale at 9am on July 8 and despite there being a few hundred thousand of them, won’t be hanging around for long!
Aiken Promotions say there’s a zero tolerance policy towards them being resold for above face value.
“Ed and his team have a strict stance against anyone using secondary ticketing websites for profit,” they warn. “On this tour, any tickets that are resold will not be valid – this means no profit to touts and no one getting ripped off. On all the stadium dates you will be required to bring your tickets, booking confirmation and credit card, plus a valid form of ID or you will not be granted entry to the show.”
Sheeran was horrified in February when tickets for his Teenage Cancer Trust gig in the Royal Albert Hall started changing hands for over £2,000 on Viagogo, the secondary ticket site with an IDA-supported base in Limerick who were accused of “moral repugnance.”
Don’t be surprised if Mr. S is joined along the way by Beoga, the northern trad merchants who feature on the Divide album’s ‘Galway Girl’ and ‘Nancy Mulligan’, and guested with him on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury last Sunday. Talking about their own LP in the making, band member Eamon Murray says: “There will be ‘features’ from household names that will surprise a few and challenge the perceptions of Irish music.”
Catch them live supporting Passenger in the Iveagh Gardens, Dublin (July 23); Indiependence, Mitchelstown (July 6); Fleadh Cheoil, Ennis (August 19) and National Concert Hall, Dublin (October 4).
Finally on the Ed Sheeran front, the UK’s Official Charts Company are introducing new rules that would exempt album tracks from the Singles Chart, which at one point this year had 16 of his songs in it.
“It’s tougher than ever for new music and developing artists to break through, and this is us doing our bit,” CEO Martin Talbot said when announcing that from mid-July there will be a cap of three tracks per artist in the chart, and more emphasis being placed on sales rather than streams to “accelerate” the speed at which songs go in and out of the Top 100.