Under 12% of Zach Bryan tickets bought by people in Dublin as support acts announced

Ellen O'Donoghue

Less than 12 per cent of the 180,000 tickets sold for Zach Bryan’s three Phoenix Park concerts were bought by people in Dublin.

Peter Aiken of Aiken Promotions revealed the news at a briefing on Wednesday announcing extra tickets and the support acts for the biggest event of the summer, attendance-wise.

“It’s all outside Dublin, it’s going to be a huge invasion of people from Northern Ireland and from Mayo, and Donegal, a big, big crowd is coming from Donegal,” Aiken said.

Normally for a show of this magnitude, 45 to 50 per cent of ticket sales would be from the greater Dublin area, Aiken explained, but for Bryan’s shows, that figure is just under 12 per cent.

That means there will be a large logistical operation in place because of the amount of people travelling to Dublin.

“It’s never happened before in the history of music or live concert promoting that you have so many people [who do not know who the artist is],” Aiken said.

“If you’re in Belfast or you’re in Donegal and you mention Zach Bryan, everybody knows him, it just doesn’t seem to resonate here in Dublin”.

“Even though, if you look him up there’s 225,000 people listening to Zach Bryan on Spotify every month in Ireland, the only person bigger than him on Spotify is Taylor,” Aiken said.

"Zach Bryan, we did him a couple of years ago in the Helix of all places, and we had a pre-registration, one or two pre-registrations for tickets. We opened it at 10 o’clock on the Monday and at 11.30am we closed it down,” Aiken added.

“They got in touch with us panicking, saying ‘You’ve closed the registration’, and we informed them that we had 10,000 people already registered, so it wasn’t just such a big risk about taking Zach Bryan to Phoenix Park, we already knew it was a huge interest”.

“There’s not too many who go from the Helix to three nights at Phoenix Park”.

Aiken added that he thinks Bryan’s concerts this summer in Dublin will have “some of the biggest singalongs we’ve ever seen.”

“He tells great stories and it seems to resonate with Irish people, this is his biggest market in the world, but he’s doing massive business in America... but per population, this is his biggest market in the world.”

“To sell 180,000 tickets for a guy that a couple of years ago, was unknown, it just shows you what great songwriting does what great songs do, how it resonates with the Irish public,” Aiken said.

“A couple of years ago, this guy was on a boat in Southeast Asia in the navy, and he put two songs on YouTube and the rest is history,” Aiken added, referring to how Bryan got his start.

“Because of the ticket buying, we’re aware of where people are coming from, so we know where they’re they’re coming from, we know what day they’re coming for, and then we work with the coach companies so that there will be coach parking in Phoenix Park so that they have a designated area to go to”.

“It’ll be safe and secure, the buses will be numbered so they know where their bus is," according to Aiken, however, "Logistically it'll be a big issue to get the people in and out".

“I wouldn’t be worried because we have the right team behind us, we have the right traffic management plan behind us, and we did it previously here with Ed Sheeran but that would’ve been more sort of 50/50 [people from Dublin vs people from outside Dublin]".

“But also the fact that we’ve got the two support acts, we’re opening the doors early, we’re going to get the message out so people will allow themselves plenty of time to come, so we’re not worried, we will get it right.”

A limited number of extra tickets will also be released for Zach Bryan's concerts at Phoenix Park on Friday, June 20th, Saturday, June 21st and Sunday, June 22nd.

Support acts

Support acts were also announced on Wednesday for the three concerts which will see Bryan perform in front of 180,000 people. Bryan will play for 60,000 fans each night.

Turnpike Troubadours and Noeline Hofmann have been announced as support for the Phoenix Park gigs.

Turnpike Troubadours are an American country band from Bryan’s home state of Oklahoma, and their self-titled album reached the top 20 of the Billboard 100.

The other support act, Noeline Hofmann, is “quite an unknown,” Aiken said.

The 20-year-old hails from Canada and has been tipped to be one of the biggest new artists, Aiken added.

The extra tickets will go on sale on Friday, March 21st at 9am on Ticketmaster.ie.

For the concerts, Aiken Promotions has also added a family area for the first time.

The family area is only for families and small kids, but will also be alcohol-free. The family area has sold out for the Friday and Saturday nights, but a small number of tickets will be put on sale for the area on Friday.

Grammy Award-winning Bryan, from Oklahoma in the United States, has risen to the forefront of country music with what has been described as a once-in-a-generation voice.

The last artist to play a concert in Phoenix Park was Ed Sheeran in 2018 as part of the Divide tour, while artists and bands who played there in previous years include The Killers, Robbie Williams, Snow Patrol, The Stone Roses, and Kanye West.

Of course, Pope Francis also gave Papal Mass at Phoenix Park in August 2018. Bryan's last concerts in Ireland were in April 2023 at The Helix, which has a capacity of just under 2,000.

This is in large contrast to the Phoenix Park venue, which has hosted some of Ireland's biggest concerts - with Robbie Williams' 2003 show at the venue setting the record for the biggest open-air concert ever held in the country.

The popstar - who will play Croke Park in August 2025 - sold 135,000 tickets to the concert.