By Lo Hoi-ying
Concert tickets for the three shows by Hong Kong singer Gloria Tang Tsz-kei, known as G. E. M., at the Kai Tak Stadium from August 15 to 17 were mostly snapped up within 30 minutes when public sales opened on Friday morning.
A Post reporter who visited the HK Ticketing website when sales opened observed that the cheapest seats for the Saturday and Sunday shows on August 16 and 17, which cost HK$680 (US$87) each, were sold out within three minutes.
Despite the HK Ticketing website showing that most tickets in the other categories were available, attempts by the Post to select tickets were unsuccessful.
鈥淭here are currently too many visitors, please try again,鈥 a pop-up message read.
The pop star will be celebrating her 34th birthday on August 16, and the show on that date proved the most popular, with fans eagerly scrambling for tickets to celebrate the occasion with her.
By 12.10pm, all standard tickets for the Saturday show were sold out, leaving only seats with a restricted view.
Tickets are also available for purchase on travel platform Trip.com and Chinese platforms Damai and Ctrip.
On Trip.com, only the HK$1,568 package, which includes a HK$1,180 concert ticket and a 72-hour Citybus pass, was available by 12.10 pm.
But users who tried to select it had to retry multiple times, with the website saying 鈥渢he promo is really popular鈥. By 12.16pm, all packages offered on Trip.com were sold out.
The presale concert tickets for Tang, who has also been dubbed 鈥淐hina鈥檚 Taylor Swift鈥, were sold out in just over an hour on June 25. Nearly 120,000 people got in the online queue to buy tickets that day.
The August performances will mark the first time that Tang, who is popular in mainland China and Hong Kong, has held a concert in the city since 2017.
Born in 1991, Tang earned the nickname 鈥淐hina鈥檚 Taylor Swift鈥 due to similarities with the American pop star. Both are known for writing their own songs, often about love and romance.
Tang is the latest artist to announce a performance at the 50,000-seat stadium, which is the centrepiece of the HK$30 billion (US$3.8 billion) Kai Tak Sports Park, the city鈥檚 first multipurpose sports, entertainment and leisure complex.
Over the past few months, the stadium has hosted concerts by British rock band Coldplay, Cantopop star Nicholas Tse Ting-fung, Taiwanese band Mayday, and Taiwanese singer Jay Chou. Other artists, such as South Korean boy band NCT Dream in August and K-pop group Twice, will hold concerts in December.