Beyoncé will bring her Renaissance tour to London for five dates
(Picture: PA)BeyonceÌ-mania broke out on Tuesday as tickets went on general sale for the UK leg of her Renaissance world tour.
The pop superstar, 41, was set to play five gigs in the UK but today three extra London dates were added — meaning she will now play the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on May 29 and 30, and again on June 1, 3 and 4.
It sparked an immediate scramble from hundreds of thousands of fans desperate to get their hands on tickets, which range in price from £55 to £2,400 VIP experiences.
More than 370,000 fans were in the online queue for tickets to the London venue on Ticketmaster when they went on sale at 10am.
One fan, Crystal Bonnar, tweeted: “How are there 369,000 people in the queue in front of me for BeyonceÌ tickets? I literally went on straight at 10.”
Another wrote: “Joined queue at 10am. How can there be 380,000 people ahead of me?”
💌 EXTRA DATE 💌 @Beyonce has confirmed a fifth and final date at London's Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 1 June 2023.
— ticketmasteruk (@TicketmasterUK) February 7, 2023
On sale now 🎟️ https://t.co/EzRY3ePfJ6 pic.twitter.com/2OMYSWBID3
A select few fans seemed to have more luck.
“There’s only 1,700 people in front of me for BeyonceÌ tickets, I feel sick,” one wrote.
Some users who had managed to snap up tickets were then attempting to sell them on online. On resale sites such as Viagogo, ticket packages were listed for over £2,000 per person.
But experts warned desperate fans to be wary of buying tickets from second-party sites.
Karen Worstell, senior cyber security strategist at VMware, said: “Be especially vigilant about clicking on ticket sites and links to services you don’t normally use. Ensure that both company and personal computer firewall settings and advanced threat protection are in place and up-to-date.”
The Renaissance world tour, named after her Grammy-winning dance/house-sampling album of the same name, is BeyonceÌ’s first in seven years. Her last was the Formation world tour in 2016.
On Sunday, the singer made history by becoming the most-decorated Grammys artist of all time, beating the previous record held by Hungarian-British conductor Georg Solti.
However, the star — who is an advocate of LGBTQ+ rights — faced a backlash for dedicating her Grammy wins to the “queer community” just weeks after she performed in Dubai.
The singer reportedly made $25 million for her show at the new luxury hotel Atlantis The Royal on January 21 in the UAE country, which is known for its anti-LGBTQ+ laws and homophobia.
A viagogo spokesperson said: “At viagogo we want fans to have the options and flexibility they deserve for buying and selling tickets to live events. Beyoncé’s tour has been long anticipated, and the demand for tickets is no surprise, exacerbated by the limitation of being able to purchase through only one distribution channel, creating endless queues that still often leave fans empty-handed, which is far from a fan-first experience.
“The good news is that Beyoncé has added new dates, which is a great way for artists to meet fan demand and it often has positive effects for fans on the re-sale market, putting more tickets into the market and bringing prices down. That said, once the initial excitement about the Beyoncé’s tour settles, so too will the market.
“We saw this with the recent on-sale of the Taylor Swift tour where tickets in the U.S. were selling for an average of over 50% lower than the average price of tickets listed. It’s also important to note that tickets listed at eye-catching prices rarely, if ever, sell. We encourage buyers to monitor our marketplace for something that suits their budget.”
