By Jim McCarthy Mar 13, 2009 0 comments

One…Million…Tickets! That’s a Thriller

In about four hours, Michael Jackson’s 50 performances at the 02 dome in London sold out.  That adds up to 1,000,000 tickets that were made available and they’re all gone.  You can check out the whole story if you want more.

None of the stories seem to be reporting the face value of these tickets, but they’re selling in the aftermarket for $400 minimum on most dates.  If we guess that they were about 100GBP, that’s about $150 or a revenue on the series of shows, for ticket sales alone, of $150,000,000.

Wow.

I mean, really, wow.

It reminds me of what Stewart Copeland of The Police told me a couple months ago when he answered my question about why The Police had been so successful on tour:


“It was successful because the band hadn’t been together for a while.  The brand was pristine, and therefore when we pulled it off the shelf, it was all shiny.  It was a classic, well preserved.  It’s an antique that has all the handles still on it and all the filigree is still in place.”

I don’t think you can say that the Michael Jackson “brand” is pristine by any means, but you can say that it’s been a long, long time since he played live, and he was, for those of you a bit young to remember, bigger than any musical act since then. I can’t even think of anything close.

At one point in the 1980s, his album Thriller was selling a million copies…per week!  Everybody, and I really mean everybody, even hard-rocking stoner dudes, had that record or tape.  There were nine songs on the album and 7 of them were top-ten hits!

Seven!

And it’s also worth saying that the videos for “Billie Jean,” “Beat It” and “Thriller” really re-defined music video.  They were like little movies instead of either just sticking a camera in front of a performance or putting the band on a yacht and have some models splashed in buckets of paint prance around in the background like this. (Gotta admit…I still like that video. :) )

So this is a hit, and I’ve been saying for years that this is a natural thing for MJ to do.  Even better, and still likely, would be a Jackson Theatre in Las Vegas, where he’ll hold court a la Celine Dion and just mint money for years to come.

And not a recording in sight…

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