Westlife Free Concert
All Ready To Go...

Top Irish pop group "Westlife" have been confirmed as one of the headline acts in this year's Rose of Tralee Festival, which started on Friday 18th August. The group will perform a free open-air concert in Denny Street on Sunday 20th August.

It's not surprising therefore that demand for the free concert tickets reached an all-time high in the town and beyond over the last two weeks.

The Festival organisers had a mammoth task distributing the 10,000 free tickets to Westlife's tens of thousands of (mostly young) fans, who will travel to Tralee for the concert. Not only was the mechanism for allocating the tickets a nightmare, but the staging of the event will cause some headaches as well.

The situation arose as the Fun Lovin' Criminals, who were originally booked to perform, had to cancel some European dates, including Tralee. Featuring alongside Westlife in Denny Street will be Dove and Madasun. RTE have indicated that they are prepared to video the open-air concert for later transmission on television.

In the meantime, everyone in Tralee was looking for tickets for the Denny Street gig, with the Festival office and Radio Kerry being inundated with calls. The local media had 2,000 tickets to "give-away" in competitions, 3,000 were distributed to fans on a first-come first-served basis and the Rose Supporters Club received the balance for it's paid-up members.

Meanwhile the stage has been erected in Denny Street, the security arrangements have been put in place - the only unpredictable piece of the jigsaw which still remains to be organised is the weather! However, no matter what happens, this event looks like being the greatest free concert of the Millennium!

Rose of Tralee Festival: Fri. 18th - Tues. 22nd August 2000