With the pop star’s visage plastered across the capital and his music downloaded to thousands of mobile phones, Ronan Keating concert organizers expressed confidence Sunday that last-minute buyers will sell out Wednesday’s show at Olympic Stadium.
About one-third of the indoor arena’s 7,000 tickets had been sold as of Sunday, said Glen Felgate, general manager for CTN, which is organizing the show. “Sales are picking up…people always buy at the last minute,” Felgate said.
Keating, the former singer with best-selling Irish boy band Boyzone, is being billed as the biggest international star to play Cambodia to date.
The concert was originally to be held outdoors at the stadium, where there is a capacity of 50,000. But changes in Keating’s tour schedule prompted organizers to shift the show indoors to avoid hosting an outdoor event during the rainy season, Felgate said.
“Keating was meant to be coming earlier in the year… [The show] wasn’t scaled-down at all,” he said, adding that he hoped the concert would help create a market for international entertainment in Cambodia. “People are becoming more and more aware of international music…[and] have more money to spend,” Felgate said. “They want to see entertainment. There’s an appetite for it.”
The marketing campaign for the concert has included vans selling tickets at universities and a MobiTel text-message lottery to win free tickets. Sending a text to the lottery downloads Keating’s music to your mobile phone, Felgate said. Tickets for the show are priced at $15, $25 and $65.
David Spriggs, general manager for MobiTel, which like CTN is part of local tycoon Kith Meng’s Royal Group of companies, said thousands of Keating text messages had been sent to the company.
Cambodian pop singer Lida Siv—currently the host of CTN’s “Girl Band Quest,” a televised singing competition—will open Wednesday’s show. “I feel thankful and happy because I’ve never been in an international concert before,” said Lida Siv, 22. “Ronan Keating is very, very famous…. I hope to learn something from him.”