Christopher BarrettLive Nation-owned heavy rock festival Download will sell out this year for the first time in the event’s two-decade history, according to promoter Andy Copping.
The 20th edition of Download, which has been extended to four nights for the first time, will take place from 8-11 June with Metallica headlining on both Thursday and Saturday.
The 90,000-capacity festival had already become the fastest-selling in the event’s history, with early bird tickets and ‘RIP packages’ having sold out in November.
Weekend tickets have now sold out, with only day tickets available for Thursday, Friday and Sunday.
Copping told Variety that the final remaining day tickets are expected to sell out in the next few days.
“We’ve done some big numbers in the past,” said Copping. “But this one has been a complete other level.
“We saw this huge uptake in early bird tickets –and when I say huge, I mean huge. We ended up doing 35,000 before we’d even announced a band – that’s unheard of. Normally, on a very good year, we’d do 4,000 early birds.”
Copping said he was inspired to have Metallica play two sets after the band agreed to play two nights at each of festival promotion company Danny Wimmer Presents’ shows in the US in 2021.
He told Variety, “The beauty of Metallica is they have such a huge catalog of songs. There is a finite amount of bands that you could do it with, but I’d certainly look at it again in the future, probably when there is something special going on around the festival.”