SALT LAKE CITY — For the second time in three months, Garth Brooks caused a website to crash.
Last Friday, hundreds of thousands of fans waited online anywhere from two to four hours to get a ticket to a special drive-in concert the country star is performing for 300 drive-in theaters across North America this Saturday.
On June 19 — 50 minutes after tickets went on sale — Brooks posted to Facebook and encouraged his fans to be patient. The singer said more than 100,000 vehicles were trying to claim a spot and the ticketing system, Universe, wasn’t up to speed like the entertainment company Ticketmaster.
Tickets for 50,000 cars were sold in two hours — an estimated 250,000 people, according to WTHR. At that point, up to 500,000 fans were still waiting to purchase a ticket.
“They’re not used to these kinds of numbers, and they are processing as fast as they possibly can,” Brooks told fans.
Less than four hours later, after it appeared the one-night event had sold out, Brooks posted to Facebook again and told fans there would be a second chance to buy tickets the next day.
The “Friends in Low Places” singer said the ticketing system Universe had sold more tickets than were available because of a glitch that processed some credit cards as not valid and led to duplicate tickets. He said tickets were starting to trickle back into the system and could be purchased on June 20.
Now, as of Tuesday, some tickets are still available for purchase.
Three drive-in theaters in Utah are showing the concert, which was filmed without an audience in Nashville: West Valley City’s Redwood Drive-in; the Motor-Vu Theater in Tooele; and the Basin Drive-in in Mt. Pleasant, Sanpete County.
According to the ticketing system, the two Saturday night showings in Mt. Pleasant are sold out. Tickets to the late-night showings of the concert in West Valley City and Tooele are still available.
Tickets are $100 and cover one passenger car or SUV, up to six people. The event will follow a number of safety protocols, including maintaining at least 6 feet of distance between vehicles and limiting capacity in restrooms, the Deseret News previously reported.
“This is going to be a fun night,” Brooks said in a Facebook post. “This is going to be, ‘Stuff your family in a car, bring food, everything, and have the time of your life kind of fun, going to the drive-in.’ I just love it.”
Brooks’ drive-in concert is one of the latest examples of out-of-the-box thinking the country star and other musicians are embracing amid the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to leave larger music venues shut down.
On March 23 — about a week and a half after concerts worldwide started getting canceled or postponed — Brooks and his wife/fellow country star Trisha Yearwood hosted a Facebook Live concert that brought in more than 3 million people and caused the site to crash multiple times, the Deseret News reported. A week after that concert, Brooks and Yearwood did an hourlong CBS special where they took additional requests from their fans.
Involving drive-in theaters represents another creative trend that has emerged during the pandemic — these theaters have seen a resurgence in popularity and generated revenue as regular movie theaters remain dark, according to the Deseret News.
On the same day Brooks airs his drive-in concert, singer Josh Groban is hosting a special live-streamed concert via his official website, the Deseret News reported. Like Brooks, Groban expressed excitement at finding new and creative ways to reach out to fans during this time.
“I’ve never done anything like this and in these strange days I’m so thrilled to do any kind of concert for you,” Groban wrote on Twitter. “This will be one for the books for sure.”
When Brooks announced the drive-in concert earlier this month on “Good Morning America,” he called it “social distancing partying.”
“This is a perfect way for us to still get to play music and still follow all the rules that we’re under right now,” Brooks told “Good Morning America.” “I hope people are going to start working on flashing their light, honking their horns and hopefully rolling down their windows.”
“This thing is turning out to be one of the most stupid, coolest things on the planet,” he said in a Facebook video last week. “I’m lucky to get to be a part of it, lucky to get to be with you.”