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Music

25th Jan 2015

Whelan’s manager explains last night’s Ed Sheeran ticket mix-up

Certain fans were left disappointed outside the venue

Tony Cuddihy

Certain fans were left disappointed outside the venue.

Dave Allen, the venue manager at Whelan’s, has explained that the Wexford Street venue was not at fault for some Ed Sheeran fans being left disappointed on Saturday night.

Watch Ed Sheeran sing Thinking Out Loud with the Whelan’s crowd here…

Certain people were unable to gain wristbands despite being in possession of tickets from production company Applause Store.

“It was very unfortunate, the only blackspot in the whole proceedings,” Allen told 2FM’s Paddy McKenna on Sunday afternoon.

“At the end of the day Whelan’s hired the venue out to a production company called Applause Store, who handle all the ticketing, so it was out of our hands. They usually do TV shows like Top Gear and The X Factor final.

“They oversubscribe because people don’t show up but we had advised them that we didn’t think people wouldn’t show up. So it was very unfortunate that what happened (did occur).

“Applause tried to get in touch with everyone who received an email to make sure they were coming. They said on Friday that there were around 50 people they couldn’t reach and they were worried they wouldn’t show up. For us, we never thought those people wouldn’t show up but Applause must have invited more at that point and that’s where the error occurred.”

60 million people

Despite that, Allen says that last night – filmed for VH1 Storytellers – was one of the biggest in the venue’s history.

“It definitely has to be up there. There was a reach of 60 million that tuned in. It looked amazing – they’d some amount of equipment in so it would have wanted to, but it did look fabulous.

“For Ed, trying to keep it together for an hour-long broadcast would have been very difficult but he was absolutely amazing. You could see him really warming up and getting into it as the night went on.”

Image: Whelans on Twitter