Promoters Hope For Last-Minute Concert Sellout

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.”