More than €120,000 worth of Garth Brooks tickets for the concerts that never were have yet to be refunded a full year after they went on sale.
The country singer’s back-to-back Croke Park concerts scheduled for last July fell foul of Dublin City Council’s long established licensing rules and it refused to allow him play the last two of the proposed five concerts.
Describing himself as “heartbroken” and “crushed”, Brooks pulled all five concerts claiming that being asked to pick just three of the five was “like asking to choose one child over another”.
Despite frantic calls to friends in high and low places – including the Taoiseach, the Mexican ambassador to Ireland and even the White House over the course of a long week last summer – Brooks' extremely lucrative children could not be saved.
And so an unprecedented refund operation had to be put in place by Ticketmaster.
Returns have now been processed for the vast majority of the 400,000 tickets sold but around 2,000 tickets have yet to be cashed in.
With the cheapest tickets priced at €64.50, a not insignificant €129,000 remains unclaimed by fans of the country singer.
A spokesman for Ticketmaster said there had been “a flurry of activity” before Christmas as people sought refunds. The number of refunds sought fell significantly each week but the booking agent said it had “picked up to a steady flow again”.
There is no deadline on people seeking refunds.
“This is an open-ended process and people remain entitled to their refunds,” a spokesman said.
“Ticketmaster will continue to process the refunds as they come in for as long as necessary. However, we would encourage anybody still holding a ticket to send them in so that we can refund their money.”
