Despite the official line-up still being under wraps, tickets for Lollapalooza, the annual three-day music festival in Chicago, went on sale yesterday, March 30. The 2010 event is scheduled to take place August 6-8 in the city’s Grant Park.
Advance three-day passes are available for $190, and after that batch sells out, the price will increase to $215. Single-day tickets are not yet available.
The festival held two presales last August, both of which sold out. Three-day souvenir passes priced at $60 sold out in eight minutes, and a second early-bird special offered three-day passes for 2009 prices, or $175. Those tickets also sold out quickly.
It’s not known how many tickets were sold in those sales. Brooke Alexander, marketing manager for Lollapalooza’s production company, C3 Presents, told TicketNews that the company does not release information on ticket sales. She did note that Lollapalooza sold out in both 2008 and 2009, reaching its total capacity of 75,000 attendees per day.
That means 225,000 fans came to Chicago last year to watch acts like the Killers, Depeche Mode, and Kings of Leon. There’s been plenty of speculation about this year’s line-up: the industry is buzzing that Lady GaGa will be performing, along with Green Day, Arcade Fire, and a reunited Soundgarden. The Stokes recently confirmed their attendance with the Chicago Tribune.
Musician Perry Farrell conceived of Lollapalooza as a traveling music festival in 1991. From 1991-1997 the summer festival traveled throughout the United States before disappearing and then being resurrected again for one year, in 2003. Austin-based event promotion company C3 Presents took over the festival in 2005 and reconceived it as a three-day destination event.
In January 2009, C3 Presents signed a ten-year contract extension with the Chicago Park District and Parkways Foundations to keep the festival in Chicago.