Zep deadline extended

Fans have more time to register for tickets.

14 Sept 07 - The deadline to register for Led Zeppelin tickets has been extended to midday on Wednesday, after an unprecedented demand.

A Statement from the promoter Harvey Goldsmith apologised to fans who've been having trouble, but explained the website has been getting 5 million hits per hour since the press announcement. He added:

"We urge people to be patient and to remember this is a ballot system and that all registrations will have equal standing regardless if they register first or last.

"To the thousands of fans that have already registered, we thank you for your support of the Tribute To Ahmet Ertegun concert and we continue to do our best to ensure that tickets for this show go directly to you and don't end up in the hands of the unscrupulous touts. "

"I guess led Zeppelin have sold 300 million albums and if even a fraction of those people wanna come and see them then you're going to have these sorts of numbers."

With the massive amount of interest in tickets, it is inevitable that not all people registering are fans.

But Chris Goodman from Outside, who are doing the PR for the gig, says they're determined that tickets reach the right people:

"One of the reasons for the registration is to get round the touts. You can only have a pair of tickets per household so you can't just register lots and lots of email address.

"And they will be actively searching sites like eBay to see if people are actually trying to sell them. I've seen adverts already; they'll say you can have a ticket for this amount of money or this is a better ticket for that amount of money, but these things just aren't true."

Although, he admits that one or two may slip through the net:

"Obviously there's a possibility that this will happen and people will be selling them. Where possible it will be stopped, but obviously it's a growing problem for the entire industry."

With the consistent rate of 5 million hits an hour, we're now looking at hundreds of millions of hits on the site. Chris says this really is like nothing before:

"The only thing I can compare it to really is Glastonbury and this is way above that. And I guess the Spice Girls have had a lot of hits for their concert as well, but it's nothing like this - this outstrips everything.

"I guess Led Zeppelin have sold 300 million albums and if even a fraction of those people wanna come and see them then you're going to have these sorts of numbers."

Lucy O'Doherty