Croke Park bosses have accused local residents of a “breach of trust” after leaking a link to AC/DC pre-sale tickets.
The Aussie rockers will play Croke Park on August 17 as part of their first European tour in eight years. They last performed in Dublin in 2015 at a sold-out the Aviva Stadium.
Residents living around the stadium were given the opportunity to buy AC/DC tickets ahead of the general sale on Friday, as a gesture of goodwill by stadium bosses for the disruption that will be caused in August.
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But on Wednesday afternoon the link was revoked after it appeared on a website. Billy O’Keeffe, Community Liaison Officer for Croke Park, said the link was pulled because there was a “breach of trust”.
He told The Irish Mirror: “We have a database of residents who obviously gives us permission to receive emails. We would’ve sent out a link to them Wednesday morning at 8:45am, which went live at 9am.
“I was then notified by a resident on Wednesday afternoon to say that they had seen the link shared on social media.
“At that stage, we talked amongst ourselves, and thought the best thing to do was to pull it at 6pm yesterday evening (Thursday).
“Residents did have an opportunity to buy tickets between 9am and 6pm yesterday evening so I would’ve thought that most fans would’ve gone on early in the morning and bought their tickets at that stage.
“But we just felt that it was a breach of trust, really. We asked people not to share the link. Unfortunately, that happened and as a result, we felt like we had to act.”
He said he was unsure how many tickets were sold as a result of the leak. On Wednesday afternoon, residents around Croke Park and Clonliffe Road received an email stating: “Earlier this morning we sent a link allowing residents to access tickets to ACDC prior to their general sale tomorrow.
“The link was provided to RESIDENTS ONLY and a request was made asking that it would not to be shared. It has come to light that the link has been shared on certain websites - a breach of trust.
“As a result of this breach the link has now been terminated and access to the presale is no longer available.”
But Mr O’Keeffe said despite the blunder, he doesn’t believe it will hinder residents receiving a pre-sale link for future Croke Park concerts.
He added: “In terms of future links being sent out, we hold regular meetings with residents and that will come up at our next meeting and we’ll talk to residents and see what their feelings are in relation to it. But I don’t envisage it affecting things in the future.”
Patrick Gates, from the Clonliffe and Croke Park Residents' Association, declined to make any comment on the link being revoked, but added that the numbers of concerts being held at the stadium continues to remain a thorny issue for residents.
“The number of concerts is a problem in terms of the disruption that it causes and the concentrations of numbers, it creates additional disruption to local residents.…. But that is a different issue.
”We haven’t really met as a residents association around it but we might in the next couple of weeks.
“It’s unlikely we’ll be objecting but we’ll have a conversation, and we may contact Croke Park in terms of letting them know our position and our concerns that we’ve had to it in relation to it.”
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