Garth Brooks Comeback Special *ALL 5 SHOWS CANCELLED* READ FIRST POST

Reekwind

8-10 wrote: »

Is this legal? Seems unfair on the residents to claim they did everything to the letter in getting only 3 licences and no more are possible while at the same time they were open to a 4th behind closed doors

Again, as per above posts, there is no legally binding agreement that there must only be three nights in Croke Park. One Direction alone had three nights there in May.

Happyman42

sydthebeat wrote: »

Let's nip this in the bud because this mistake Is being made over and over again in this thread.
There is NO law which restricts there to only being 3 events a year in croke park!!

There is an agreement in place since 1998 which limited the events to three with an element of community gain in place for every event.

This is not a law, neither aiken nor Garth Brooks was doing anything illegal

Nor did the DCC.
Aitken played fast and loose with the regs though, leaving it until the last minute until he applied for a licence.
Garth cancelled 3 of the gigs...nobody else.

rockey4215

OhHiMark wrote: »

Jesus that's a fair embarrassing show from socal musiclover in this thread. Did she think that we'd drop to our knees and beg her to come for a little holiday in Ireland?

hahaha what a story mark!

Mr_Red

Happyman42 wrote: »

Nor did the DCC.
Aitken played fast and loose with the regs though, leaving it until the last minute until he applied for a licence.
Garth cancelled 3 of the gigs...nobody else.

WTF

They applied on April 16th

scudzilla

OhHiMark wrote: »

Jesus that's a fair embarrassing show from socal musiclover in this thread. Did she think that we'd drop to our knees and beg her to come for a little holiday in Ireland?

i think it's a he

Wishiwasa Littlebitaller

Davie89 wrote: »

TThey were granted a license for THREE shows and unfortunately that is all thats allowed.

He was offered four licences. No wonder he refused all of them.

To cause all this crap over one concert?? It's scandalous.

People saying he threw a tantrum couldn't be more off the mark. He and his management have been planning these concerts for months on end. This is not part of a tour. This is an five night event to play to 400,000 people over five nights, almost 5000 miles away and of course the stage was being designed for Croke Park, he hasn't toured in years. When wheels are set in motion for something on this scale, millions can be lost from the slightest hitch, which is why movies can go millions over budget when production is delayed for just a few days.

I firmly believe that certain people in DCC were on a power trip here and how they have handled this has been a disgrace. More will come out in due course I would say.

All DCC had to do was licence the concerts, award compensation for the residents (€500,000 was already offered for local projects) fine Aiken / GAA and perhaps ban them holding concerts during 2015 but instead what they did was leave it far too late to let the GAA / Aiken know not all five licences would be granted (just mere weeks before the cocerts, when 400,000 tickets have been sold) and then play bargaining games behind the scenes, the details of which where not made public.

There is also good evidence that they lied to the public when they released statements saying that they told the GAA / Aiken that they would not be granting all five licences at an early stage, something both the GAA /Aiken insist is untrue. Add to that the fact that residents have received letters from the DCC confirming receipt of their objections to the concerts, which they never submitted and who have now signed statements to the Gardai to that effect, insisting their signutures were forged, and you really do have one hell of a mess here.

Of all the people that deserve a share of the blame here, and the GAA /Aiken are not totally exempt perhaps (time will tell), one thing I do know is that the artist and the ticketholders should be the last people to have fingers pointed at them. No matter what you think of Garth Brooks, this is all one holy hell of a mess to have to deal with just week before you are due to take to the stage for your long awaited comeback. You wouldn't mind if the matter was at rest, but injunctions trying to stop the three licenced concerts have just been submitted to the courts and so I honestly can't say I blame him, or his management for saying enough is enough.

8-10

Reekwind wrote: »

Again, as per above posts, there is no legally binding agreement that there must only be three nights in Croke Park. One Direction alone had three nights there in May.

No, I was asking if it was legal to make the offer of 4 nights. By legal I mean would it have met DCC regulations. When they announced the 3 it sounded like no more would have been possible but now it's coming out that it was possible.

sydthebeat

Happyman42 wrote: »

Nor did the DCC.
Aitken played fast and loose with the regs though, leaving it until the last minute until he applied for a licence.
Garth cancelled 3 of the gigs...nobody else.

Jesus Christ you haven't a clue.

Ailen promotions made the application on the 17th April! !!!

They were legally prevented from making it any earlier as its had to be made within 10 weeks of the event.

Please inform yourself before spouting any more rubbish.

Also, the event was planned as a five gig show .... not a three gig show. ... and read that agAin. ..PLANNED as a 5 event. Now Garth Brooks planners are supposed to change the whole design and planning AFTER the ship with the equipment has left America? ??? Please people, some perspective

Woodville56

sydthebeat wrote: »

Let's nip this in the bud because this mistake Is being made over and over again in this thread.
There is NO law which restricts there to only being 3 events a year in croke park!!

There is an agreement in place since 1998 which limited the events to three with an element of community gain in place for every event.

This is not a law, neither aiken nor Garth Brooks was doing anything illegal

Ok then, an "agreement" .Should all parties involved, GAA, Promoter, Brooks management and the city Manager not have revisited this agreement, rather than castigating a public servant as being the villain of the piece ? Or would you have him run the gauntlet of the residents in waving through the 5 concerts which were organised in full knowledge that only 3 such events were "agreed". Easy to scapegoat the public servant while excusing the "ah sure it will be all right on the night " attitude of the rest !

Happyman42

Wishiwasa Littlebitaller wrote: »

He was offered four licences. No wonder he refused all of them.

To cause all this crap over one concert?? It's scandalous.

People saying he threw a tantrum couldn't be more off the mark. He and his management have been planning these concerts for months on end. This is not part of a tour. This is an five night event to play to 400,000 people over five nights, almost 5000 miles away and of course the stage was being designed for Croke Park, he hasn't toured in years. When wheels are set in motion for something on this scale, millions can be lost from the slightest hitch, which is why movies can go millions over budget when production is delayed for just a few days.

I firmly believe that certain people in DCC were on a power trip here and how they have handled this has been a disgrace. More will come out in due course I would say.

All DCC had to do was licence the concerts, award compensation for the residents (€500,000 was already offered for local projects) fine Aiken / GAA and perhaps ban them holding concerts during 2015 but instead what they did was leave it far too late to let the GAA / Aiken know not all five licences would be granted (just mere weeks before the cocerts, when 400,000 tickets have been sold) and then play bargaining games behind the scenes, the details of which where not made public.

There is also good evidence that they lied to the public when they released statements saying that they told the GAA / Aiken that they would not be granting all five licences at an early stage, something both the GAA /Aiken insist is untrue. Add to that the fact that residents have received letters from the DCC confirming receipt of their objections to the concerts, which they never submitted and who have now signed statements to the Gardai to that effect, insisting their signutures were forged, and you really do have one hell of a mess here.

Of all the people that deserve a share of the blame here, and the GAA /Aiken are not totally exempt perhaps (time will tell), one thing I do know is that the artist and the ticketholders should be the last people to have fingers pointed at them. No matter what you think of Garth Brooks, this is all one holy hell of a mess to have to deal with just week before you are due to take to the stage for your long awaited comeback. You wouldn't mind if the matter was at rest, but injunctions trying to stop the three licenced concerts have just been submitted to the courts and so I honestly can't say I blame him, or his management for saying enough is enough.

Obviously nobody told/or he ignored the fact that these concerts where 'subject to licence'.
If he was aware of that fact and constructed a show that could only happen if there was 5 of them, who is to blame for that? The people of Ireland? His fans?
The attempt to excuse Brooks here is getting more and more laughable and will be hilarious when the writs are issued. It plainly obvious to me that the play here is a massive lawsuit by Brooks and his management.

Reekwind

Happyman42 wrote: »

Aitken played fast and loose with the regs though, leaving it until the last minute until he applied for a licence.

What are you talking about? Aiken applied almost three months in advance of the concerts (on 17 April) as per the requirements. They were entirely within the regulations here.

8-10 wrote:

No, I was asking if it was legal to make the offer of 4 nights. By legal I mean would it have met DCC regulations. When they announced the 3 it sounded like no more would have been possible but now it's coming out that it was possible.

I got you slightly wrong but the point stands. There is (AFAIK) no legal constraint on the exact number of nights that Brooks could play. DCC simply made a decision that the disruption caused by two additional nights would be too much. They could have let them all stand, they could have attached mitigating conditions, they could have allowed none, etc. Entirely up to them.

Kangoo Man

The real losers here are the 400,000+ people who bought tickets and all the workers/traders who would have been benefited from these concerts.

The most sensible thing to do, was to ban future concerts in Croke Park for 2 years and let these concerts go ahead. This way the GAA would have got a rap on the knuckles, DCC would have looked like they were doing their job and everyone else would be happy!

rubadub

lordgoat wrote: »

three events a year, but what classifies as an event is what causes the hassle.

i.e. is Garth the event or are they 5 separate events?

Was this really under question? I never would have questioned that these were 5 "events". Sure what if he tried for 20.

I certainly understood "3 events" to mean 3 dates, and probably not call it a concert incase some smartarse saw this as a loophole and called their "event" something else other than a concert.

Could have been an airshow or something.

Were they really that desperate that they were clinging to a potential loophole like this? pathetic if they were.

baaba maal

horseburger wrote: »

You could try answering my question, rather than trying to be funny, on the issue of tickets being sold on by touts, considering the extra demand of people from the 4th and 5th shows looking for them.

how could that be dealt with?

To develop this scenario, Led Zeppelin (a band that were quite popular in their day), were the main act in a benefit concert in 2007- as global demand for this gig exceeded supply (one million people pre-registered for the 20,000 tickets) should they have been told to do a second, third, fourth concert? Were they stupid to turn down the chance to do a month long residency at the O2 in London? Just because demand exceeds supply does not mean that the planning system should be turned on it's head to accommodate this.

Those referring to the word "illegal" are correct up to a point- the GAA entered into a voluntary agreement with the local community that three special events would be allowed per year, and anything above this would be submitted to DCC as an application for an event licence. The fact that the GAA chose this route is their own business (I'm not a member), but they DID broker this arrangement, the result didn't go the way they wanted but that's part of being a grown-up.

sydthebeat

Woodville56 wrote: »

Ok then, an "agreement" .Should all parties involved, GAA, Promoter, Brooks management and the city Manager not have revisited this agreement, rather than castigating a public servant as being the villain of the piece ? Or would you have him run the gauntlet of the residents in waving through the 5 concerts which were organised in full knowledge that only 3 such events were "agreed". Easy to scapegoat the public servant while excusing the "ah sure it will be all right on the night " attitude of the rest !

They did revisit the agreement, did you not read Kieran Mulveys report?
The county manager should have made the decision based on the greater good and not on the good of the nimby tiny minority that enjoy all the positives of living in croke parks shadow yet want none of the negatives even when there is reasoned solutions offered to them.

This is a tiny vocal minority, AND a weak county manager, who have cost the whole country serious reputational damage.

Happyman42

Reekwind wrote: »

What are you talking about? Aiken applied almost three months in advance of the concerts (on 17 April) as per the requirements. They were entirely within the regulations here.

.

Just about, if he had applied earlier and listened to what he was being told (I have no reason to disbelieve the DCC on this) that the DCC had serious concerns about 5 gigs then something might have been able to be done.

Why he signed a contract where he couldn't force Brooks to play the 3 licensed gigs is curious too. As somebody else has said, I suspect there was 5 gigs from the get go.

FAILSAFE 00

Is there no GB meme thread yet?

baaba maal

sydthebeat wrote: »

Jesus Christ you haven't a clue.

Ailen promotions made the application on the 17th April! !!!

They were legally prevented from making it any earlier as its had to be made within 10 weeks of the event.

Please inform yourself before spouting any more rubbish.

Also, the event was planned as a five gig show .... not a three gig show. ... and read that agAin. ..PLANNED as a 5 event. Now Garth Brooks planners are supposed to change the whole design and planning AFTER the ship with the equipment has left America? ??? Please people, some perspective

But it was presented to the public as a two gig deal before climbing up to five. I'm guessing this was done both to ramp up the hype and to catch any local opposition off guard (knowing the arrangement between the GAA and the locals). If he had presented it to the public at the outset as five gigs do you think there would have been a different outcome? Genuine question.

I can't get past this issue that there is five days worth of stuff on a ship coming from the US but Garth forgot to tell us that this was the plan all along. It's like he took a gamble in his business life but it didn't work out. This happens in business all the time and should not be transferred as somehow being the responsibility of us to remedy. Perspective indeed.

j8wk2feszrnpao

sydthebeat wrote: »

Ailen promotions made the application on the 17th April! !!!

They were legally prevented from making it any earlier as its had to be made within 10 weeks of the event.

Eh? Aiken could have made the application as much time in advance as they wanted to. Why are you stating they they legally could make it earlier than the 17th?

blankblank

horseburger wrote: »

You could try answering my question, rather than trying to be funny, on the issue of tickets being sold on by touts, considering the extra demand of people from the 4th and 5th shows looking for them.

how could that be dealt with?

It cant be dealt with

This is a fair market, its how the economy works

I bought a bike last week for 50e, I went on to sell it for 60e

Is it ethical? No its not but unfortunately this is how people make money. Its the very foundation of every transaction you carry out on a day to day basis, greater demand with reduced supply means higher prices

Happyman42

sydthebeat wrote: »

who have cost the whole country serious reputational damage.

Would you ever give this nonsense a rest!

Sam Kade

Whatever about not doing the shows I'd say Garth would be fcuked after two by the looks of him on the news never mind 5 in a row. What was all that talk last year about slimming down for his great Irish comeback.

j8wk2feszrnpao

sydthebeat wrote: »

The county manager should have made the decision based on the greater good and not on the good of the nimby tiny minority that enjoy all the positives of living in croke parks shadow yet want none of the negatives even when there is reasoned solutions offered to them.

This is a tiny vocal minority, AND a weak county manager, who have cost the whole country serious reputational damage.

Ease off a little.
Let the residents themselves decide what they feel is reasonable or not.

As for the serious reputation damage, you are massively over hyping this.

The_Morrigan

sydthebeat wrote: »

Jesus Christ you haven't a clue.

Ailen promotions made the application on the 17th April! !!!

They were legally prevented from making it any earlier as its had to be made within 10 weeks of the event.

Please inform yourself before spouting any more rubbish.

Also, the event was planned as a five gig show .... not a three gig show. ... and read that agAin. ..PLANNED as a 5 event. Now Garth Brooks planners are supposed to change the whole design and planning AFTER the ship with the equipment has left America? ??? Please people, some perspective

Eh the rule is to have the submission into the council at least ten weeks prior to the event and no later, they are allowed to submit it anytime before that date.

rubadub

Reekwind wrote: »

This is of course inconceivable. Yet every other promoter has done the exact same as Aiken. Should we be bureaucratic killjoys and drive them all out of business?

Have they? can you give similar incidences?

By similar remember in this case the promoter knew fine well the maximum concerts ever here before were 4 in a year, and that there was widespread coverage of the fact that this was allowed, since it was known the max was to be 3

So by similar incidences I am looking for promoters chancing their arm and attempting to sell tickets for at least double the amount of days a venue previously maximally held, which also had widespread knowledge of being under opposition. Or instead of double it could be 4 more, e.g. did any promoter ever attempt to get 6 nights in Slane? let alone go selling tickets, slane is another venue which has a well documented history of opposition.

Aiken was refused insurance for these gigs? I am wondering if this is also "standard practice" or do they in fact give insurance for other outdoor gigs when they know permission is very likely to be granted.

j8wk2feszrnpao

Rojomcdojo wrote: »

Greedy promoter? You'd swear he was forcing people to go... All he did was align demand with supply.

He wasn't apply to supply demand by securing the licence.

Reekwind

Happyman42 wrote: »

Just about, if he had applied earlier and listened to what he was being told (I have no reason to disbelieve the DCC on this) that the DCC had serious concerns about 5 gigs then something might have been able to be done.

DCC had three months in which to table these concerns and raise the possibility that, in contrast to typical practice, additional licencing conditions may not e sufficient and that dates would have to be cancelled. They got back to Aiken less than a month before the event. Well done, planners.

Why he signed a contract where he couldn't force Brooks to play the 3 licensed gigs is curious too. As somebody else has said, I suspect there was 5 gigs from the get go.

Of course it was five nights. That was the number requested on the initial application of 17 April. That's entirely within industry practice.

Woodville56

sydthebeat wrote: »

This is a tiny vocal minority, AND a weak county manager, who have cost the whole country serious reputational damage.

So the County Manager in implementing a collectively arrived at agreement is totally to blame it appears - and the other "principals" in this fiasco are blameless ?? As for Mr Brooks, his feigned fondness for the Irish and Ireland is shown up for what it is - patronising guff by another "star" who, like so many of his ilk, is petulence and arrogance personified. I wonder how he will excuse his no show for the 3 nights he cancelled today to his loyal and out of pocket fans ?? Or is the County Manager going to be claimed liable for that too ?
As for the reputational damage done, I doubt it will warrant a second thought among other prospective "artists" , in the end it's all about the €€€ !! Just means more attention will be paid to contracts and agreements by all concerned ! It will be interesting to see how the probable legal actions arising from this debacle will pan out !

cython

baaba maal wrote: »

But it was presented to the public as a two gig deal before climbing up to five. I'm guessing this was done both to ramp up the hype and to catch any local opposition off guard (knowing the arrangement between the GAA and the locals). If he had presented it to the public at the outset as five gigs do you think there would have been a different outcome? Genuine question.

I can't get past this issue that there is five days worth of stuff on a ship coming from the US but Garth forgot to tell us that this was the plan all along. It's like he took a gamble in his business life but it didn't work out. This happens in business all the time and should not be transferred as somehow being the responsibility of us to remedy. Perspective indeed.

On the bold section: Seriously?? At this stage of the planning, they had to work towards a plan of 5 gigs going ahead, as trying to get the remaining 2 gigs worth of stuff sorted post approval might not have been viable if they just shipped the three initially. Not to mention that why would they assume 3 would be granted and not just 2 if they were going to go that route? It's not like this stuff has been on a container ship since January or February before the gigs were announced at all, after all.

baaba maal

sydthebeat wrote: »

They did revisit the agreement, did you not read Kieran Mulveys report?
The county manager should have made the decision based on the greater good and not on the good of the nimby tiny minority that enjoy all the positives of living in croke parks shadow yet want none of the negatives even when there is reasoned solutions offered to them.

This is a tiny vocal minority, AND a weak county manager, who have cost the whole country serious reputational damage.

The tiny vocal minority who were known about by the wider community in the area, and yet were the only ones to organise themselves to oppose the gigs. Why didn't the less vocal majority in the area (who apparently care passionately that the gigs proceed) organise themsleves to make submissions in favour of the gigs. I am emphasising the fact that it was known in advance that these people were going to oppose the gigs- everyone on both sides knew the system of applying for event licences and now they are upset because the system came to a conclusion they didn't expect- this is the real world, people need to step up the plate sometimes if they want to make things happen.
I'm still waiting for the GAA to make a substantive statement on their role in all of this. Now that the gigs are off it is incumbent on them to do so.

Btw, for all the people claiming that our global reputation is in tatters, try googling the issue and see which media outlets are covering it. You may be surprised that the only people talking about this issue is us. In fact, if we want this scandal to go away, we should stop talking about it;)