Highest demand for tickets for one music concert

Led Zeppelin’s (UK) one-off reunion show at London’s O2 Arena on 10 December 2007 attracted more than 20 million ticket requests. Such was the demand for the 9,000 pairs of tickets that were made available to the public that they were reported to be selling for up to £1,800 ($3,654) on eBay – more than 14 times their original price of £125 ($253). The two-hour concert, the legendary rock band’s first full show since 1979, was dedicated to Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun (USA, b. Turkey, 1923–2006), who signed the group in 1968. Tickets were made available via a ballot system on Ertegun’s website with all proceeds going to the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which funds university scholarships in the USA, Turkey and the UK. The website crashed immediately amid reports that ticket applications were being made at a rate of 80,000 per minute (according to service provider Pipex).

Original band members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones were joined on stage by Jason Bonham, son of Led Zeppelin’s late drummer John Bonham.

The gig marked the band’s first full set since playing twice at the Knebworth Festival in Hertfordshire, UK, on 4 and 11 August 1979. They also appeared at Live Aid in 1985 for a brief set ("Rock and Roll", "Whole Lotta Love", "Stairway To Heaven").

They kicked off the concert with “Good Times Bad Times”, the first track from their eponymously titled debut album, and ended with “Kashmir” before returning for an encore that featured “Whole Lotta Love”. See NME source for full set list.

The most expensive tickets were bought by BBC Radio 2 listener Kenneth Donnell, from Glasgow, who paid £83,000 ($168,482) for a pair of tickets in an auction to raise money for Children in Need. The concert was originally scheduled for 26 November 2007 but had to be postponed after Jimmy Page fractured a finger when falling over in his garden.

The concert also featured Keith Emerson (Emerson, Lake & Palmer), Mick Jones (Foreigner), Paolo Nutini, Paul Rodgers (Bad Company/Free) and Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings.

Led Zeppelin have sold an estimated 300 million albums during their career. They were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

The O2 Arena concert was released as a film and in its entirety on CD and DVD – titled Celebration Day, a reference to a song on their Led Zeppelin III album – in late 2012.

Quote from concert-goer Simon Meakin from Oxford, UK: “I saw them at Knebworth in 1979 and rated them 11 out of 10. Last night they were 100 hundred times better. They are peerless. The greatest rock combo in history.”