Here’s How Many Soundwave 2016 Tickets Were Sold Before Its Cancellation

Since announcing the cancellation of Soundwave 2016 last week, Soundwave promoter AJ Maddah has revealed just how many tickets had been sold for the festival before it was officially scrapped.

Speaking with triple j‘s Hack program, Maddah says that he was told at the beginning of last week that around 20,000 tickets had been sold for Soundwave 2016.

Maddah once said that Soundwave 2016 would “sell out instantly”, and on the day of the festival’s cancellation he took to Twitter to say he “tried very hard” to get Rage Against The Machine to reform for the occasion, but things “didn’t work out”.

For ticket sales comparisons, Maddah has previously said the Melbourne leg of Soundwave 2015 came “very close” to selling out the Melbourne Showgrounds, which has an approximate capacity of 35,000. Maddah also told News Corp Australia that Adelaide’s 2015 numbers hit just over 12,000.

In 2013, when Soundwave billed the likes of Metallica, Linkin Park and Blink-182, around 45,000 tickets were sold in Adelaide and 75,000 in Sydney, Maddah has said. That same year, Soundwave is reported to have generated $63 million.

Soundwave 2016’s 20,000 tickets sold at $170 a piece puts its ticketing revenue at around $3.4 million, of which $1.9 million has reportedly been paid to Maddah’s previous company, which went into liquidation. Of the remaining $1.5 million, Hack says Soundwave’s contract with its 2016 ticketing agent Eventopia shows that 80 per cent of the funds would have been passed on to Maddah.

Maddah has told Hack that Eventopia didn’t want him to cancel Soundwave 2016, but he decided to do just that after a “Mexican standoff” in which the company refused to give him more money for artist deposits. “If I’d had $50,000 the gig would still be on,” he says.

Soundwave 2016 was cancelled just over a month out from its scheduled dates in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Since Eventopia’s “Mexican standoff” with Maddah, the company announced yesterday that they will honour refund requests for Soundwave 2016 ticket-holders.

Maddah has said that Soundwave “definitely” isn’t going ahead in 2017, and has confirmed that the Soundwave Touring company will also soon cease to exist.

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