AC/DC sell 300,000 tickets “in minutes” in Australia

AC/DC’s Rock Or Bust Australian tour in late 2015 could end up becoming as big as the band's last record-breaking visit, four years ago.

Yesterday, the band shifted 300,000 tickets in five cities when they went on sale at 9am. Within 30 minutes, new stadium shows were added for Sydney and Melbourne. By midday, promoter Garry Van Egmond had laid on extra dates for Brisbane and Perth.

In Germany, the band earlier set a new world record by shifting over 300,000 tickets in the shortest timespan, of 77 minutes.

The Australian dates are now:

ANZ Stadium Sydney (capacity 83,500): Wed November 4, Sat November 7.

QSAC Brisbane (capacity 48, 500): Thurs November 12, Sat November 14.

Adelaide Oval (capacity 53, 500): Sat November 21.

Domain Stadium Perth (capacity 43, 500): Fri November 27, Sun November 29).

Etihad Stadium Melbourne (capacity 56,347): Sun December 6, Tues December 8).

Going on the venue capacities, these four extra Australian shows could alone equate to another 230,000 ticket sales.

Yesterday’s scenes were similar to when AC/DC brought their Black Ice show to where it all began for them, forming in Sydney and honing their skills in Melbourne.

On that tour, the original five shows ballooned to eleven, where they played to 700,000 fans between February 11 and March 8 in 2011. It was the highest grossing tour ever for Australia, according to Van Egmond. Figures he released were that it took $90 million at the box office and a further estimted $30 million in merchandising. At that time, speculation within the music industry were that it could be their last tour, as word was leaking out about guitarist Malcolm Young’s dementia.

The figure does not include the additional record sales for Alberts/Sony, as the Black Ice album and the AC/DC back catalogue raced back into the ARIA charts.

The second highest grossing Australian tour is Pink's Funhouse (2009) which grossed $75 million after playing to 660,000 fans over 58 dates.

AC/DC played two performances at the Coachella Festival in California, on April 10 and 17. The two 20-song sets were virtually identical except for the second show replacing The Jack with High Voltage. The show began with Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be and ended with the traditional For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) as part of the two-song encore which included Highway To Hell. From the new album, only three songs made it to the American sets: Rock Or Bust, Play Ball and Baptism By Fire.

The Rock or Bust world tour begins on May 5 in Holland. The 25 European shows sold 1.75 million tickets in 24 hours. They return to North America for 13 more shows, between August 22 and September 28.